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Viennese Medley 








Viennese Medley 


by 

Edith O’Shaughnessy 


Author of “A Diplomat’s Wife in Mexico,” “Diplomatic 
Days,” “Alsace in Rust and Gold,” etc. 



“ ’S giebt nur a Kaiserstadt, 

’S giebt nur a Wien.” 

(There’s only one right royal town, 
There’s only one Vienna.) 


New York 


B. W. Huebsch, Inc. 


Mcmxxiv 








COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY 
B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

PRINTED IN U. S. A. 


' \K 


OCT 24 *24 

© Cl A 8 0 8 6 4 5 




/ 


A 


* 





Countess Miton Szechenyi 

anil 

Countess Gladys Szechenyi 

FRIENDS OF THEN AND NOW 





CONTENTS 


Their Aunt Ilde 
page 3 

ii 

Liesel and Otto 
page 53 

hi 

Anna and Pauli 
page 91 

IV 

Hermann and Mizzi 
page 125 

v 

The Eberhardts 
page 163 

VI 

Corinne 
page 201 


VII 

Fanny 

PAGE 233 


I 

THEIR AUNT ILDE 




♦ 





VIENNESE MEDLEY 


I 

THEIR AUNT ILDE 


Adagio as sat. 

“Sorrow’s crown of sorrow is 
remembering happier days.’* 

War and Peace had stripped Frau Ildefonse 
Stacher, born von Berg, of everything except her 
physical being, leaving her quite naked in another 
but certainly not better world. 

As the widow of a Viennese Kommerzienrath, 
dead after thirty years of service in the Finance 
Ministry, she had enjoyed a comfortable pension. 
She had been considered rich herself at the time of 
her marriage for she had had as dowry some shares 
in a beet-root industry in Bohemia, but when the 
Republic of Czecho-Slovakia was formed she found 
herself mysteriously and without appeal separated 
from those shares, which had been as much a 
part of her life as her hands and feet, and the sep¬ 
aration though swift was to prove fatal, at least to 
her use and dignity. 


3 


4 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


During the long, pleasant years of her widowhood 
she had had a little house at Baden near Vienna, 
where her only brother, an official in the Northern 
Railways, and his various wives and many children 
had been in the habit of spending holidays and con¬ 
valescences. If any child were ailing it was 
promptly sent to Tante Ilde, who could always be 
counted on to receive such gages of affection with 
open arms. 

When her brother, accompanied by one or the 
other of those quickly succeeding wives, went off on 
his annual walking tour through the Semmering, as 
many as could be got into the little house were de¬ 
posited there for safe-keeping. The family Christ¬ 
mas and New Year’s dinners took place at Tante 
Ilde’s, and on the 18th of August, the Emperor’s 
birthday, they were all to be found again sitting 
about that well-laden table. 

She was the first to know their joys and griefs, 
and “I’m going to tell Tante Ilde about it,” was a 
familiar expression in the family. 

A pleasant lady to look at, too, with a bit of lace 
flung over her shining white hair, a bit of it always 
about her neck. Her skin had a lustrous smooth¬ 
ness, the many tiny wrinkles no more disfiguring 
than the fine crackings in old ivory. Her nose was 
delicately arched and her lips kept long their agree¬ 
able red. But it was her eyes, more than all of 
these, that caught the attention. They were very 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


5 

large and were set quite flatly, shallowly in her face, 
pale blue lakes of indefectible innocence, and while 
time had wrought some changes in the areas sur¬ 
rounding them,—a wrinkle, a dent, a falling in 
or away,—their placidity had gently endured. They 
opened widely and though sometimes they had been 
obliged to gaze upon one or the other wicked spec¬ 
tacle of a wicked world, no shadow of its evil re¬ 
mained upon them. That wide, blue, child-like 
gaze from that aging face was what was first noticed 
about her and last forgot. The startled expression 
that appeared upon her countenance at the beginning 
of her misfortunes, towards the end was changed 
into one of almost formidable submission. 

She had always been slender and graceful with a 
way of holding herself that verged on elegance and 
her clothes were put on with a pleasant precision. 
She had worn a long gold chain around her neck 
since any of them could remember, holding a little 
gold watch tucked in at her neat belt; she always 
wore, too, a pair of round gold bracelets that suc¬ 
cessive baby nephews and nieces had grasped at, 
leaving fine marks of little teeth upon them. Tante 
Ude loved those tiny dents. There was often a gen¬ 
tle tinkle as she played with her chain with the hand 
bearing her wedding ring and a quite inconspicuous 
one of amethyst and pearls. Just as inconspicuous 
was Frau Stacher’s being, her situation and her 
works, as that pale stone, those little, lustreless 


6 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


pearls. None save a doubly-blindfolded Fate, strik¬ 
ing recklessly about at millions would have found 
so unimportant a mark. 

Corinne, her best-loved niece, always called her 
“my Dresden china Auntie.” There was between 
them some natural affinity, as well as special affec¬ 
tion; though Tante Ilde loved them all, Corinne was 
the true child of her heart, what the best of daugh¬ 
ters might have been. She had never had any chil¬ 
dren and her life had revolved beneficently about 
the family of her brother,—only her half-brother to 
be sure, but then they never thought of that. When 
he married for the third time, quite superfluously 
the family considered, the ostensible reason he gave 
was that it would be a pity to leave no one to enjoy 
the pension due whoever was fortunate enough to 
be his widow. His sister had smiled at this, her 
fine, soft smile, and even Heinie himself had been 
obliged to laugh though he cared little about jokes 
concerning his somewhat solemn being; and he had 
married the bright-cheeked, shining-eyed, full- 
figured, not over-intelligent young Croatian of his 
desire, Irma Milanovics, and they had had three 
sons in the four years he lived to be her husband. 
It made him the father of eleven children, all living 
at the time of the outbreak of the war, together 
with an adopted daughter, the child of a dead 
friend,— (one more, it couldn’t matter where there 
were so many). He had always enjoyed the patri- 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


7 

archal feeling which would come over him as he sat 
at that big oval table, serving the most generous of 
portions, or when out buying objects by the half- 
dozen or dozen. In many other ways, too, that 
numerous, good-looking family had flattered his per¬ 
sistent paternity. 

Two sons had been lost in the war, one last seen 
at the fall of the Fortress of Prszmysl, then traced 
to a prison camp in Siberia. After two years a card 
came through the Red Cross informing them of his 
death from typhus. The other had been killed in 
the last mad scuttle across the Piave. A daughter, 
too, had died of a wasting malady in the winter 
of 1915 after the death of her lover at the taking 
of Schabatz from the Serbs that first August of the 
war. But there were still eight of them in the thick 
of the fight for survival in post-war Vienna. Irma’s 
three boys, nine, eleven and twelve years of age were 
not yet ready for the combat, but all the others were 
in it for victory or death. 

To return to their aunt Ilde. The first two years 
of the peace had not been so bad. With some diffi¬ 
culty she got through and succeeded in keeping that 
roof that showed such unmistakable signs of collapse 
from falling about her head. Still in a small way 
she received them all on New Year’s Day of 1921. 
For the customary roast pork was substituted a less 
expensive “Rindfleisch garniert” the classic boiled 
beef and vegetables, and there had been an Apfel- 


8 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


strudel, delight of all Viennese. Tradition main¬ 
tained itself in a world now obviously composed of 
wreckage. But Frau Stacher had had an uneasy 
feeling as she sat, for what was indeed the last time, 
at the head of her table surrounded by her nieces 
and nephews. A week later she found, quite sud¬ 
denly, that never again would she get anything from 
those Bohemian investments handed down from her 
father, the revered von Berg. She made some des¬ 
perate, useless efforts, but she was always brought 
up round by the fact, once so pleasant, now disas¬ 
trous, that she was the widow of an Austrian, and 
herself an Austrian. That sudden cleaving of 
things that she had supposed indissoluble, opened 
a gaping void in front of her, into which she was 
inevitably to fall. Behind her, far behind her lay 
the shining, solid, comfortable years, like another 
person’s life, when she was Frau Kommerzienrath 
Stacher, born von Berg. That providential “von” 
had incredibly embellished her life. There was, 
indeed, all the difference in the world between being 
born a “von” or not a “von.” She had always re¬ 
gretted that her mother’s somewhat hasty second 
marriage to handsome Heinrich Bruckner, some 
years her junior, had not had the more sustaining 
qualities of a “von,”—then all Heinie’s children 
too. . . . 

Now it appeared that nothing made any differ¬ 
ence. Every landmark was gone. Authority was 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 9 

gone. Gone beauty, reverence, faith. All that 
warm, imperial lustre in which the middle classes 
had burnished themselves, proud and content that 
such things were, had faded into the night with 
Vienna’s setting sun. Sweet things were gone not 
only out of her life, but out of the nation’s, leaving 
black misery, or a crushing commercialism which, 
though it lent money, lent neither beauty nor honor. 

It was all symbolized to Frau Stacher in the ruin 
of her own life, epitomized in the blank, useless 
loneliness of her downlyings and her uprisings. 
Life, once dear life, had become quite simply a mon¬ 
ster that threatened to devour her and then spit her 
into the grave. 


One warm, golden January Sabbath set like a 
jewel in the silver of the Baden winter, Frau Stacher 
had sat hour after hour at her window in chill, stark 
dismay, watching without seeing the soft afternoon 
light sift through the bare, velvety branches of the 
chestnut tree in front of her door. She was waiting 
for Corinne; but the moon had already risen and 
its silver glimmer had taken the place of the gold of 
afternoon before she heard a light step on the 
gravel. That light step carried the heaviest of 
hearts for Corinne had come out to discuss baldly 
matters till then not even thinkable. . . . 

But whichever way they turned and twisted and 


10 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


tried to avoid it, they were always finding themselves 
back at a certain dark spot. Finally they very 
quietly owned to each other, even saying the unthink¬ 
able thing aloud, that the Baden house would have 
to be given up. Then Corinne braced herself to 
meet those pale eyes, out of which the color had 
been suddenly washed. 

“You can get quite a sum from the sale of the 
furniture,” she ventured after a long silence in which 
she had looked as through a blur at the familiar 
appointments of the room. They sat knee to knee 
holding each other’s hand tightly; Corinne felt as 
if she were watching her aunt drown in the Danube; 
she wanted to cry “Help,” but she only said: 

“Of course you must keep enough of your best 
things for a nice room near us all,—if we can find 
one.” 

The housing problem was beginning to loom up 
blackly, overshadowing quite a number of things 
already dark enough. She leaned closer and 
pressed her aunt’s head against her loving young 
heart. There Frau Commercial Advisor Stacher, 
born von Berg, wept her only tears. She had a fine 
spirit which even then was not broken, but hurt, bent 
and vastly astonished. During the long hours that 
followed they mingled their pity and their love, 
which bore in the end a thin hope that “something 
would happen”; but all the same, when early the 
next morning Corinne went away she knew that 


THEIR AUNT ILDE n 

the first stone had been cut for the sepulchre of her 
aunt’s existence. 


That “nice room near us all” proved indeed un¬ 
obtainable. In a city that had once offered every 
imaginable sort of pleasant shelter, there didn’t seem 
to be a single “nice, unfurnished room” to offer a 
homeless old lady,—and it was said so many had 
died in or because of the war,—no, Frau Stacher 
couldn’t understand. 

A few bits of furniture left from the sale were 
finally distributed about among the various nieces 
and Frau Stacher went to board, just as a makeshift 
—“till things get better” Corinne had assured her, 
at the house of an acquaintance, who in the palmier 
days had partaken of her easy bounty. There 
nights of aching, sleepless homesickness followed 
days of empty, useless longing for all that had once 
been hers, for her little situation in life that had 
enabled her, childless as she was to be a center of 
pleasure and comfort to the only beings she loved. 
It was finished, done with, that was quite clear. She 
sat more and more alone in her room. The clack of 
Frau Kerzl’s tongue and her invectives at Fate, quite 
justified though they were, got finally and intoler¬ 
ably on her nerves. She thought she could not bear 
to hear another time that things were as they were 
because the Hapsburgs had taken all the gold out of 


12 VIENNESE MEDLEY 

Austria when they went, and left the “others” sit¬ 
ting with the paper money. 

Frau Stacher was no intellectual and had at¬ 
tempted no mental appraisement of the national ca¬ 
lamities. Even in the good days her most enjoy¬ 
able reading had been the Salon Blatt, where what 
the Imperial and Royal family and the “Aristokra- 
ten” did, said, wore, and where and how they 
showed themselves was duly recorded for the delec¬ 
tation of an appreciative people. A morning paper 
had always been brought to the house, it is true, but 
she would only run quickly over world-events which 
had never so slightly modified her life, whereas the 
doings of the First Society lent it both lustre and 
interest. 

She knew that Frau Kerzl, whose grief had dyed 
her political feelings a deep red, was going on in a 
stupid, even wicked, manner, when she so unjustly 
and blasphemously spoke of the Hapsburgs, but she 
had no satisfactory answer to make, so after her 
way she was silent, spending the long evenings alone 
in her room. She couldn’t see to sew in it, nor in¬ 
deed to do anything more complicated than move 
about. The single light was placed high up in the 
center of the ceiling and was reflected but dimly 
from the dark walls, the pieces of heavy furniture 
and the brown porcelain stove that was never 
lighted. 

Fortitude was, seemingly, the only virtue that 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


13 

Frau Stachcr, gentle, easy-going, unheroic, was 
called upon to practise. 

But the thing couldn’t last forever. Often she 
was glad she was seventy. It made the outlook 
easier. There couldn’t be more than twenty years 
of treading up other people’s stairs. The instinct 
of home was almost as strong in her as the instinct 
to live. No, there couldn’t be more than twenty 
years of it. . . . Then, too, in a month, a day, an 
hour even, it might all be over. But one evening 
sitting in the shadowy room, her little, white, knitted 
shawl drawn about her shoulders, her hands crossed 
under it on her breast, she was suddenly and terri¬ 
fyingly aware of the beating of her heart,—almost 
as if for the first time. She found she was as much 
afraid of death as of life—and that was a great 
deal. . . . 

Sometimes one or the other of “the children” re¬ 
membered to come to see “poor Tante Ilde” and 
often Corinne, in her moonbeam way, would slip in 
and out, still and pale indeed like a ray of reflected 
light, and every Sunday after dinner she and Corinne 
would meet at Irma’s. She went frequently to 
Kaethe’s, too, that is, whenever she had anything to 
take to the children. It wasn’t a place where one 
could go empty-handed. 

But all, in one way or another, were caught up in 
the struggle for survival. In a starving, freezing 
city, not starving, not freezing, took the last flow 


14 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


of everybody’s energy, so she was mostly alone. 
But solitude, for which nothing in her life had pre¬ 
pared her, had no charms for her. She had an al¬ 
most unbearable longing to be in crowds, in happy, 
busy crowds, where people jostled each other as 
they went about little, pleasant errands. 

But there was another thing beside being certain 
—vaguely—that she wouldn’t live forever, which 
had come to make her sojourn at Frau Kerzl’s not 
only endurable but desirable ... a cold, creeping 
premonition concerning the not distant time when 
even that measure of independence would be denied 
her. The money from the sale of the furniture 
was going, was gone. 

One morning in that terrible “little hour before 
dawn” when anxiety had done its worst, she got up 
and counted and recounted the thin packet of crowns 
left in her purse. Then in panic she made a mental 
survey of her other remaining “values,” of those 
things her nieces were “keeping” for her. The re¬ 
sult had sent her shivering back to bed, where fright¬ 
ened by a fear beyond any she had ever known, even 
in nightmare, she had pulled the bedclothes up over 
her head. She was afraid, afraid. It was grinning 
at her. . . . 

She dozed finally. But she only knew she had 
been asleep when she found herself throwing the 
sheet aside with a start, thinking she heard Co- 
rinne’s voice calling up the stairs in the house at 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


i5 


Baden. . . . Perhaps something would happen. 

But little can happen to women of seventy except 
more of the same, whatever it is. . . . 

When in that chill December twilight she first 
found her way to the pawnshop, to “Tante Doro¬ 
thea’s,” familiar to her all her life as a sure object 
for humorous sallies, and left there her gold brace¬ 
lets, that old life dropped finally and forever from 
her almost as if it had never been, leaving her un¬ 
ticketed, unbilleted, between time and eternity. 
Truly she found that there is no greater sorrow than 
in adversity remembering happier days. 

She hadn’t spoken to any of the children about 
that fatally impending visit to “Tante Dorothea’s,” 
though she had thought of consulting Pauli; Pauli 
who always gave the impression that nothing human 
was foreign to him. But he would have given her 
the money. Humbly she deplored the burden of 
her existence on that younger generation, that dead 
wood of her fate among those green trees, bent 
themselves in the blast of misery that swept over the 
city. Every day, every hour one had to look out, 
or one was quite certainly blown over. But Pauli 
was away. Corinne, dear, lovely Corinne, she 
couldn’t bear to think of her pale light flashing in 
through the door of that pawn shop in the Spiegel- 
gasse, that fatal “Tante Dorothea’s,” whom the 
mention of in the good old days, had always raised 
that ill-considered laugh. Once or twice her 


16 VIENNESE MEDLEY 

thoughts had played glimmeringly about Fanny in¬ 
stead of “Tante Dorothea,”—to go out in a sudden, 
chilly little gust blowing from the terra ignota of 
Fanny’s life. In the end it was her business, not 
another’s, that was in question. She realized for 
the first time the solitariness of her fate, of every¬ 
body’s fate, so long hidden from her under the 
pleasant details of her daily existence which had 
seemed to bind it in a thousand ways to other lives. 

When she finally slipped out, looking fearfully 
and guiltily about her long before she got to her 
destination, as if her shameful errand had been 
stamped in red upon her face, she was further in¬ 
timidated rather than reassured to discover, as she 
turned into the Spiegelgasse, that she was by no 
means alone of her kind. All the human scrapings 
and combings of the Inner Town seemed to have 
been blown there too. Old women like herself with 
arched noses and deeply-circled, tearless eyes, thin, 
wan women, in once-good, now threadbare clothes, 
whose gentle mien, like her own, recalled unmistak¬ 
ably happier days,—how many of them there were I 
Pale spectres of that middle class whom the War 
and then the Peace had stripped of everything save 
their sorrows. The war loans they had invested in 
had gone up in the smoke of battle, or down in the 
bitter waters of Peace; the thousands, the tens of 
thousands of comfortable little incomes, left them 
by fathers, by husbands, had soundlessly, untrace- 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


i7 

ably disappeared, and they were learning the way 
to “Tante Dorothea’s.” 


The Dorotheum, if one’s business there is not 
vital is one of the most interesting buildings of its 
kind in Europe. Five of its seven stories rise above 
ground, the other two are in deep subterranean 
spaces, reaching to the old catacombs, and where 
household and personal effects of the Viennese mid¬ 
dle class are now stored so thickly and so high, 
once Roman mercenaries of the Xth Legion lay 
buried. . . . 

But Frau Stacher knew nothing of the Dorotheum 
in its historical aspect and had she known, it would 
have been of little interest to her. 

A motley, miserable throng was pressing in 
at the doors, for many, like herself, chose the 
dusk for such an errand. She found herself 
pressed close to a young mother with an anxious, 
withered face who had a pallid baby sleeping on one 
arm, while under the other she carried a small 
bundle of linen, that last of all possessions to be 
offered to “Tante Dorothea.” Behind her stood a 
former officer. It was easy to see what he had been. 
He was still erect, but he was very thin, with deep 
pits under his cheek bones, his coat was buttoned up 
to his chin and he kept his hand in his pocket. 

The pale baby on the woman’s arm waked up as 


i8 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


they stood in line, and began a wretched wailing. 
The mother tried to quiet it as she passed up to 
the counter, where a being, necessarily without 
bowels, looked quickly at the poor contents of the 
bundle, gave her a ticket and a few bits of paper 
money. Silently she received thenj and made way 
for Frau Stacher, who in a distress that moistened 
her brow and dried her mouth, tremblingly pro¬ 
duced her bracelets. She was brusquely pointed to 
another counter for precious objects, as also was the 
officer. There she found herself behind a woman 
selling a worn wedding ring, not much heavier than 
the money she got in exchange. 

The bulging-eyed man, giving Frau Stacher a 
quick, circular look that further chilled the thin 
blood in her veins, proceeded to weigh the bracelets 
in the little scales on the counter. On their last 
golden gleam was borne in a flash by Frau Stacher 
those bright, warm years in which she had worn 
them. The dull ticket she received was the true 
symbol of her state. The money would soon be 
gone and she would have neither money nor brace¬ 
lets, just nothing. As she turned away she saw that 
the officer was offering a small medallion and a mini¬ 
ature. Again she thought of the foolish jokes 
about “Tante Dorothea.” This stark, final misery 
was what it really was. . . . This doomlike end 
of everything. 

Two short weeks after, Frau Kerzl again showed 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


19 


signs of nervousness and talked loudly and signif¬ 
icantly, or what Frau Stacher, who had got timid 
even about leaving her room, thought was loudly 
and significantly, concerning the price of food; and 
how money, even an hour over-due, represented in 
those days of falling currency, a fabulous loss. 
That afternoon she took out her watch and chain 
and her amethyst and pearl ring. It was less fright¬ 
ening the second time, but she felt much sadder, and 
she was unspeakably depressed by the old man just 
ahead of her who fainted as he stood waiting. 

By January Frau Stacher’s situation became 
finally and visibly desperate. She could obviously 
no longer pay to remain in Frau Kerzl’s house and 
quite as obviously Frau Kerzl could not keep her 
just for the pleasure of it. The link in their lives 
got thinner day by day until it broke squarely in two 
that morning of the sixth of January when Frau 
Kerzl plainly hinted at the possibility, nay prob¬ 
ability of being able to wrest from the black 
heavens that star of first magnitude,—a foreign 
lodger. No trouble, out all the time, solid, certain 
pay. She didn’t cease to paint the foreigner in ever 
brighter colors. He stood out attractively, even 
flashily against the grey tenuity of her present 
boarder. Though she had feared that something 
of the kind was impending, it fell on Frau Stacher 
like a blow on a bruised spot; indeed she found she 
was one vast bruise. Anything that touched her 


20 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


nowadays was sure to hurt unspeakably, but being 
“turned out,” as she called it, had about it an 
ultimate ignominy, not at all befitting the day. She 
had always loved the sixth of January, that noisy 
feast of the Three Kings, and though she had been 
wont to complain that she hadn’t been able to sleep 
a wink because of the tooting of the horns, the blow¬ 
ing of the whistles, the beating of drums and count¬ 
less other noises announcing their arrival, that 
racket had really appealed to her sentimental soul, 
heralding as it did three royal beings bringing gold 
and myrrh and frankincense. As she lay awake 
through the cold, dark night, though there had been 
no noise at all in the streets she suddenly remem¬ 
bered that it was Epiphany; a few thin, salty tears 
moistened her cheeks as she realized that in a 
world once seemingly full of gold and myrrh and 
frankincense she now possessed naught save the 
breath in her body and the remnants of raiment 
covering it. 

She was clearly, unless “something happened,” 
among the serried ranks of that middle class fated 
to disappear. Thousands, hundreds of thousands 
of them had disappeared, been absorbed in one or 
the other appalling manner into something nameless 
and then lost from the ways of men. The “aristo¬ 
crats” were vaguely “away” economizing and wait¬ 
ing in their castles, living, as well or as ill as might 
be, from their lands. The working classes, much 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 21 

in evidence, were not at all badly off. Brawn had 
still some market value. But the middle classes, 
upper and lower? They could not all have died, 
the streets would have been heaped with bodies. 
There was some painful absorption of them into the 
life of those persisting, and this is what, for a very 
little while, happened to Frau Ildefonse Stacher, 
born von Berg; but one variation on the ubiquitous 
theme of genteel old age and sudden penury in post¬ 
war Vienna. 

On the wet, black afternoon following the wet, 
black morning of which we have spoken, Frau 
Stacher and her niece Corinne might again have been 
seen, discussing whisperingly in the chilly room at 
Frau Kerzl’s, the evident extremity of the situation. 
The eye in the ceiling that saw rather than was seen 
by, revealed them sitting even closer together than 
usual. Frau Kerzl had developed out of her for¬ 
mer friendliness and respect, strange, spying, key¬ 
hole ways. She was as well aware of what Frau 
Stacher had done with her bracelets and her watch 
and chain and her ring as Frau Stacher herself. 
She hadn’t noticed the disappearance of the brace¬ 
lets, but when she no longer saw the gold chain and 
when her boarder incautiously asked her the time 
of day she knew the Stacher jig was up, and she 
wanted to know, further, to just what tune she her¬ 
self was stepping. She had her own troubles,—the 
son who had gone off to the war, fat Gusl he was 


22 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


then called, so jolly, so full of Wiener quips and 
quirks, always humming about the house or playing 
his zither. He had been invalided home that last 
September of the war and was now coughing his life 
out in the room that was supposed to be to the 
South, but that the sun was really unacquainted with. 
A dark room in a dark, side street, one among hun¬ 
dreds of dark, windy side streets in Vienna where 
consumption has its breeding ground; the “Viennese 
malady,” it is sometimes called. . . . 

The light had found and gleamingly mingled the 
pale gold of Corinne’s hair and the silver of her 
aunt’s; their hands were tightly clasped as they con¬ 
sidered ways and means. There seemed to be few 
of one and none of the other. 

“I’ve lived too long,” Frau Stacher said at last, 
and in her heart was distilled a sudden but final 
grief that found its stinging way to her so-long un¬ 
troubled eyes. 

Corinne leaned swiftly over and embraced her. 

“Why I can’t think of life without you!” she 
cried suddenly and so glowingly that for a fleeting 
instant her aunt found herself warm in the fire of 
that love. The salt was even dried momentarily 
out of that bread and water of charity which was 
now so evidently to be her only nourishment. 

Corinne had come with a scheme of existence, the 
barest draft of a scheme of existence, she knew it 
to be, for her precious Tante Ilde. For all she 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


23 


looked elusive, shadowy, with that one light hang¬ 
ing uncertainly above, her hair the brightest thing 
in the room, she was, in accord with a strangely 
practical streak in her make-up, considering the mat¬ 
ter that engaged them in its true aspect. The sight 
terrified her, but she was there to give courage, not 
to get it. . . . 

She sat quite motionless in long, slim, graceful 
lines, (the family liking more substantial contours 
didn’t know how handsome Corinne was, “flat as a 
pancake” being no recommendation to them). Fa¬ 
miliar with those fireless, post-war rooms and their 
creeping, paralyzing chill she was still wrapt in her 
sheath-like black coat. Her little grey, fur-trimmed 
hat had been laid on the bed for Tante Ilde always 
liked to have her take it off, it made the visits seem 
less hurried; her dripping umbrella had been placed 
in the pail near the iron washstand with its diminu¬ 
tive bowl and pitcher; its handkerchief-like towel 
was folded across the little rack above it. With a 
disturbing, child-like confidence her aunt’s wide, full 
gaze had followed every movement. Apparently 
mistress of herself and of the plunging situation, 
Corinne had been conscious of the most horrible 
feeling in the pit of her stomach when she finally 
met it full as she sat down and began to caress that 
thin hand in the uncertain light which seemed, how¬ 
ever, bright enough to reveal the next step in all its 
horrid indignity. 


24 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


Corinne was a tall, small-headed, blond woman 
with a finely-arched nose and shell-like ears lying 
close to her head. Between her very blue eyes with 
a recurring oblique look that could veil her thoughts 
more effectually than dropped lids, was a slanting 
line that of late had perceptibly deepened. “Very 
distinguished,” was always said of Corinne in the 
family; always, too, that she was “different,” not 
quite indeed of their own easy-going, somewhat 
irresponsible Viennese kind which knows so well, in 
a somewhat unanalytical way, how to get something 
out of life,—with half a chance, with a quarter of 
a chance. So little was really needed for happiness 
with a basis of enough to eat. Humming a new 
waltz, remodelling a pair of sleeves, getting hold of 
a bit of fat or sugar for the women; for the men 
sitting in a warm cafe drinking beer or black coffee, 
turning over the Lustige Blatter, smoking a Tra- 
buco or a Virginia,—joy was still as easy as that 
when momentarily far enough from the abyss not 
to be dizzy and sick with the fear of falling in. 
Corinne had had in common with Fanny a North 
German grandmother and though that explained, in 
a way, a lot of things, still there remained something 
about her that the family hadn’t been able to label 
satisfactorily. Sometimes they called it cold, some¬ 
times hard, they had all come up against it in one 
way or another in those days of elemental issues, 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


25 


but terribly clever, they conceded that. She could 
generally be counted on to find some little door in 
the thickest wall. 

Since their father’s death and the consequent 
breaking up of the home, Corinne had been safely, 
solidly and enviably, it seemed to the rest of them, 
employed in the Depositen Bank, whose personnel 
even in those uncertain days, was not doing badly; 
an expanding wage as the times demanded and at a 
place run by the bank an eatable midday meal at a 
possible price. 

If it had been a matter of her aunt Ilde alone, 
Corinne could have managed, after a fashion, to 
keep that existence, so dear to her, from falling to 
pieces, though what she earned was not yet enough 
for two; but all whose heads were above water 
had not one but many drowning persons cling¬ 
ing tightly, stranglingly about their necks. Corinne 
was conscious of a finally sinking sensation as 
she proceeded to unfold the plan which appeared 
to her more and more what it really was a last 
monstrous attack on her aunt’s existence—pushing 
it nearer and nearer to the fatal edge. She had no 
single illusion as to what she was doing, and her 
voice was very soft in contrast to the hard, stark 
meaning of her words. 

“I’ve spoken to them all, darling, you don’t have 
to do a thing about it. Tomorrow you are to move 


2 6 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


to Irma’s. It will be a sort of combination arrange¬ 
ment. You’ll be paying, of course. It’s a way to 
help Irma and the boys as well.” 

Now the famous pension on account of which 
Herr Bruckner had charitably made that third mar¬ 
riage, had shrunk in buying properties to such 
pigmy-like proportions, that they didn’t count it any 
more when Irma’s needs and necessities were being 
discussed. Yet Irma and the boys had to live, that 
establishment in one way or another had to be kept 
up a while longer. 

“But I don’t see where Irma can put me,” Frau 
Stacher answered after a long silence. 

Corinne flushed: 

“Dear treasurekin . . . the alcove. . . . It’ll 
only be till I can look about, perhaps something will 
turn up; it’s to get you out of here and remember 
you’ll be paying Irma for it, you’ll feel perfectly 
independent. I’ve talked it over with her. She’s 
glad enough to be helped out. Don’t forget the 
alcove has got that plush divan of yours that 
we’ve all slept on at Baden. It’s upholstered, thick 
and soft, with happy memories. I think you’ve 
had a beautiful life,” she ended tenderly, desper¬ 
ately. 

Her aunt smiled, a ghost of a smile, at the men¬ 
tion of Baden, and the upholstery of the divan, and 
then her thin, broad lids closed flutteringly over the 
expanse of her blue eyes to keep the tears from fall- 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 27 

ing, but she made no answer. There wasn’t really 
anything to say. 

“I felt of the curtains yesterday when I was 
there,” continued Corinne in a voice that had quite 
lost its resonance, “they’re good and thick and Irma 
sewed a big hook and eye on right in the middle, and 
when they’re fastened you’ll be almost by yourself,” 
she ended but with a sudden quiver of her lips, as her 
aunt continued to look at her with her soft, wide, 
pale eyes in which the distaste she felt for the alcove 
in particular and the arrangement in general was 
clearly mirrored. She had never cared for Irma. 
Irma had something hard and strange, almost rough 
about her, that had never fitted into their own easy, 
pleasant ways. She did her duty, yes, but they were 
used to a pleasanter fulfillment of duty. However, 
it was too true that she was the only one of them 
having a living-room with an alcove. . . . Life 
was like that. 

“It won’t be forever,” pursued Corinne, “and I’ll 
be there on Sundays for dinner.” 

She spoke cheerfully but she felt as if she were 
pointing her dear treasurekin to the winter road in¬ 
stead of to shelter. Could she but have lodged her 
really in her heart! 

“I’ve been thinking about you all this week and 
planning ever since that hateful Kerzl woman” . . . 
here Corinne was pulled up short by the sudden flush 
on her aunt’s face, she couldn’t bear to hear of that 


28 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


even from Corinne. . . . Frau Kerzl who once 
had been grateful for a smile or even for advice, to 
whom she’d sent broth a whole long winter. 

Corinne continued gently as flowing water—but 
as inevitably as water seeking its own level: 

“Darling,—and this is how I have arranged for 
your dinner every day,” she spoke even more gently 
and her touch was soft, the softest touch that thin, 
trembling hand had ever known. A brightness be¬ 
yond tears was in her eyes. What was she offering 
really to her precious, her fragile, her Dresden china 
aunt? 

“On Mondays,” she proceeded, striking the sim¬ 
plest chord at first, “Liesel wants you to take dinner 
with her. She said she’d love to have you.” 

This wasn’t quite exact. What her sister Liesel, 
married since two years to a young official in the 
Finance Ministry, Liesel who was very happy, had 
really said was: 

“Of course, I don’t mind Tante Ilde coming once 
a week, we certainly ought to do what we can for 
her, . . . but when Otto comes in he does like to 
find just me. However, we’ve got to look out for 
her, poor dear,—she was always so good to us.” 

Otto was one of some half or three quarters of a 
million government employees in Vienna and was 
doing fairly well, that is well enough for two. He 
was an expert accountant and as prices went up, so 
mercifully did his salary. They got along very com- 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


29 


fortably in the tiny, three-roomed apartment that 
Liesel in her smiling way had conjured up out of the 
abyss of the housing crisis. It sufficed amply for 
their needs. They lived almost in the style that 
would have been theirs had they lived and loved a 
decade earlier. Sometimes in the evening they even 
went to the theatre, or to a moving picture. What 
use in keeping money when the next day’s fall in 
exchange made it act like ice in hot water? So with 
many shrugs of her plump, handsome shoulders 
Liesel continued to wrest an immediate happiness 
from the miserable city, and with a special sapience 
born of love pursued her daily and absorbing round 
of making her Otto and herself comfortable. They 
cared a great deal for each other, though the family 
thought Otto rather a stick and wondered how he 
had come to find such favor in Liesel’s soft, dark 
eyes. As a husband he had turned out to be vigilant 
and exclusive as well as loving, a sort of little Turk. 
Having small natural faith in men and still less in 
women, from the first he had set about guarding his 
treasure. It somehow suited Liesel. But jeal¬ 
ous!” she would boast, casting her eyes up delight¬ 
edly, a finger at her red lip. They were so young 
too, that they could hope that something, in the 
many years they expected to live, would happen to 
place their upset world on its proper feet again, and 
while awaiting that miracle they were very happy. 

Otto sometimes remembered Galicia. . . . When 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


3 ° 

a certain look came into his face it was because he 
was hearing those terrible machine guns. He 
limped slightly, his right knee having been smashed 
by a ricochet bullet, and he had had his feet frozen 
in an Italian prison camp and lost the toes of the 
left foot. . . . Oh, that mountain camp, that 
terrible cold, that tiny blanket! If he didn’t pull 
it up about his shoulders he shivered and shook 
with that deadly central cold and if he did pull it 
up his feet froze. Sometimes he dreamed of it 
in that warm bed with Liesel and would awake with 
a start to find her there, and drawing the feather¬ 
bed up higher would sink again into a blessed slum¬ 
ber. He knew that he had been lucky. 

It was because Liesel was so happy that to her 
Corinne had first gone with her plan for Tante Ilde. 
Liesel had spent summer after summer in the house 
at Baden. Her aunt had always spoiled her. 
Everybody spoiled Liesel, so evidently made for 
happiness. As a little girl she was forever rummag¬ 
ing in the attic for bits of silk and lace for her dolls, 
and would turn out the nattiest things. Now for 
herself she did the same. She was round-faced, 
fresh-skinned and smiles played easily about her 
somewhat wide, very red mouth;—she would have 
been attractive in rags. But she had that peculiar 
Viennese talent for wearing clothes, a jaunty manner 
of pulling her belt in snugly that made the observer 
conscious of her very small waist under a full bust, 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


3i 

above broad hips, a way of pressing her hat down 
upon her head at the most becoming angle; and her 
high-heeled shoes were always bright and neatly 
tied. These and a lot of other details of an ex¬ 
tremely feminine sort added undeniably to her nat¬ 
ural charms. Pauli said that though her soul was 
but a centimeter deep, you looked to the bottom 
through the clearest of waters. If in her happiness 
she sometimes forgot other people’s miseries, it was 
but natural, and when she was reminded she was 
all solicitude and self-reproach. 

“That will be nice,” Tante Ilde was saying slowly 
after another long pause, and she was gladder than 
ever that she had added the knife-rests and napkin 
rings to the spoons when Liesel was married. Then 
as a sudden thought came to her, she quite bright¬ 
ened up, “I can do the dishes,” she cried, “Liesel 
always used to hate to do anything that would spoil 
her hands.” 

“Well, she doesn’t seem to mind spoiling her 
hands for Otto,” answered Corinne rather drily. 

“They’re in love,” returned Tante Ilde gently, 
glimmeringly. 

A shadow fell over Corinne’s face at the answer 
as if a ray of light had been interrupted, or as if 
something had been muted for a moment. Her 
aunt, who was not one to break into silent places, 
waited patiently, though she was wondering who and 
what was coming next. 


32 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


“Pauli,” the shadow was followed by a light in 
Corinne’s face as she spoke the name lingeringly, 
“Pauli,” she repeated, “wants you to go to Anna’s 
on Tuesday. It’s one of their meat days—'when 
they can get it.” 

“Perhaps I better not go there then. It looks,” 
she hesitated and there were sudden tears in her 
eyes, “so greedy.” 

“Not at all,” cried Corinne. “Pauli wants you 
to go on Tuesday just because of that. He said 
he’d try to be there himself, that first time anyway. 
Anna and Hermine are quite worked up about it and 
wondering what they can give him to eat.” 

“Poor Anna,” said her aunt very gently. 

Corinne flushed. Again they were silent. 

Frau Stacher bewildered at her own fate, felt 
quite incapable in that moment of picking up the 
threads of any other life, even of Corinne’s. But 
her confidence awakened warmly at mention of 
Pauli. Pauli had a heart and was always showing 
it. Pauli understood, she felt sure, anything, every¬ 
thing. . . . Even poverty-stricken old aunts by 
marriage who had lived too long. Even to such 
Pauli was kind. 


Pauli Birbach, the husband of her eldest niece 
Anna, had got through the war without a scratch 
or an illness,—of an unbelievable luck. When a 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


33 

bomb burst where he and his comrades were sitting 
or lying, he was certain to be unhurt and soon 
to be seen carrying the wounded in gently or bury¬ 
ing the dead deeply. Typhus and dysentery alike 
avoided him. He was naturally a debonair and 
laughing soul, and his easy resourcefulness had en¬ 
deared him to both officers and men. “As lucky as 
Pauli Birbach” was a phrase among his comrades. 
And even in little ways. Wasn’t he always turning 
up with a handful of cigarettes or a bottle of wine 
or a chicken, got, heaven knew how, in a country 
picked bare as a bone? An excellent cook, too, he 
could instruct the warrior presiding over the pot 
how to make the very most of what little he had. 
Hot water and an onion under Pauli’s direction be¬ 
came a delectable if not nourishing soup. 

And the way he played the zimbalon he dis¬ 
covered in a castle they were quartered in during an 
interminable winter in the Carpathians, the Rus¬ 
sians, millions of them it seemed, just opposite,— 
only half hidden by the snowy hill that some dark 
morning they must charge. . . . 

He had seen terrible things, terrible things to a 
laughing, softhearted man, things that knocked the 
laughter out of him like a blow on the chest. . . . 
The time he went out with a patrol at day break, 
the thermometer 40 below, and they thought they 
were coming to a tent or a little hovel in the grey 
half light. . . . But it was a dozen Kossacks hud- 


34 VIENNESE MEDLEY 

died together, frozen stiff, their heavy boots sticking 
out. . . . 

And other things that had turned his pleasure- 
loving soul black with horror. . . . Christian Zim- 
mermann, they’d been at the High School to¬ 
gether, . . . Christian, his comrade, three days in 
agony, hanging on that barbed wire and no one able 
to get at him and when Pauli finally did bring him 
in . . . oh, no, you didn’t think of such things. 

And the Peace that stuck in his throat and lay on 
his chest, and the fierce angers it aroused, beyond, 
far beyond the blood-angers of the War . . . 
Five years to repair the damages of the War—a 
century those of the Peace. . . . Still Pauli often 
laughed, even in that cold, grey Vienna, scarcely 
recognizable ghost of what had once throbbed and 
glowed, that funeral urn among cities; for he was 
naturally a man of hot hope, in spite of the fact that 
Fate at her most capricious had married him to Herr 
Bruckner’s eldest daughter, a horse-faced, quite in¬ 
articulate woman, all of one color, with a solemn, 
brooding look in her eyes. She was so different from 
the glowing-eyed, sparkling-faced damsels about him 
that marriage with Anna Bruckner came to seem 
like the solving of some deep mystery. What lay 
behind those heavy, brooding eyes, with their 
curtain-like closing? She had rather fine broad 
shoulders, something long and big about her body, 
built in majestic proportions, or so it seemed to him. 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


35 

He got into a state where he had to know what it all 
meant—or die. He had been inexplicably mad 
about her all through his lyric years. . . . Anna 
his Sybil. Anna had been conscious of a flattered 
wonder, and her chill, slow blood had known its 
only warmth and quickening when she married Pauli 
Birbach. Then so soon. . . . Yes, Anna had 
gone through every hell, and there are many, re¬ 
served for stupid, jealous, ugly, virtuous women. 
She loved him more year by year. She was obsessed 
by the thought of Pauli, doggedly, uselessly ob¬ 
sessed, for early Pauli had passed to the contempla¬ 
tion of other mysteries. 

It was a tribute to his humanity, however, that 
Tante Ilde felt not the slightest distaste at going 
to his house . . . even in “that way” as she called it 
to herself. He gave more freely than he received, 
and he did both easily. Probably for all his good 
intentions he would not be at dinner on Tuesday, he 
had an airy, dissolving way with him, akin to at¬ 
mospheric changes,—brightness into cloud, cloud 
into sun and you never knew. . . . But Anna with 
her joylessness and her one ugly daughter as like 
her as the eighteen years between them permitted, 
Anna was her own flesh and blood, and she had been 
at Baden with her aunt during innumerable infantile 
illnesses. She was always catching something and 
when her hair came out after the measles Tante Ilde 
had faithfully brushed it back to a shining, brown 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


36 

abundance. It was even now Anna’s one beauty. 
They had, after all, so many memories in common 
—she couldn’t have forgotten all, everything. . . . 
On Tuesdays then. 

“On Wednesdays you’re to go to Mizzi’s,” Co- 
rinne was saying. 

“To Mizzi’s!” exclaimed her aunt in astonish¬ 
ment, throwing back her thin shoulders and sitting 
up very straight. 

“Yes . . . Fanny,” here Corinne made the habi¬ 
tual pause that followed any mention of Fanny in 
the family,—“Fanny has arranged it. You know 
Mizzi’s anxious to please her.” 

Again Frau Stacher showed no especial enthusi¬ 
asm for the arrangement. It was getting into quite 
another category. After all Liesel and Anna were 
her own brother’s children, but when you went into 
houses,—in that way,—kept up by nieces-in-law, it 
was quite a different matter. Mizzi was the fam¬ 
ily dragon too. Mizzi with a look or a word could 
quite ruthlessly devour aged aunts, superfluous chil¬ 
dren. A monster really, with a mouth and stomach, 
but no entrails. They all had come to know about 
Mizzi—in one way or another. 

“Perhaps I better go without dinner on Wednes¬ 
day,” Frau Stacher suggested with a slight quiver 
of her lips, though not because of the food. 

“You could perfectly well if you had too much or 
even enough at other times. But we’ve got to keep 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


37 

your strength up through the winter. You’ve just 
got to live,” Corinne repeated sweetly, warmly, 
“and then think of poor Manny—he’ll love having 
you.” 

“Oh, Manny,” her aunt responded, “poor 
Manny’s got nothing to say,” but her voice had a 
note of loving compassion. 

“Poor Manny, dear Manny,” repeated Corinne 
slowly in the same tone, adding, “It isn’t any of it 
forever,—next year I’ll be making more money, 
and perhaps we can get a tiny, tiny apartment 
somewhere.” 

Now the “tiny, tiny apartment,” even as she 
spoke, seemed to Corinne the mirage it truly was. 
People had been known to die of joy on getting a 
tiny, tiny apartment. That very morning in the 
newspaper she had read of a man who had fallen 
dead when he heard he was at last to have a certain 
apartment he had long needed for himself and his 
family, and a rich man too. Everybody was talk¬ 
ing about it. 

“I can’t leave Elschen,” continued Corinne, “it’s 
a miracle anyway sharing that pleasant room with 
her while her sister’s away.” 

“It makes me so happy to know you’re there,” 
said her aunt warmly, for Corinne was of the race 
of homeless ones, and her address apt to be uncer¬ 
tain. Then for all her patience, she couldn’t help 
wondering about Thursday. 


38 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


“On Thursday,” continued Corinne, having got 
to the fourth of her slender fingers, “you’re going to 
dear Kaethe’s.” Kaethe and Corinne were half sis¬ 
ters by Aunt Ilde’s brother’s first and second wife. 

“To Kaethe’s!” she interrupted, “but they’re all 
starving. I couldn’t eat a mouthful there.” 

“It’s just because of that, that it’s easy. When 
you go there on Thursday you are to take the whole 
dinner—for all of them. It’ll be quite like old times 
when you always brought us things.” 

Though delicacy was an essential attribute of 
Frau Stacher, she could not, at this point, restrain a 
slightly inquiring look at her niece Corinne, who 
answered after the thinnest of pauses: 

“It’ll be all right. . .Fanny’s going to see about it. 
She does everything for them anyway that is done.” 

Frau Stacher closed her eyes rapidly once or 
twice, but made no remark. It was, undeniably, 
Fanny whichever way you looked. . . . 

The contemplation of the Thursday arrangement 
however, induced a long silence. They had a sort 
of hopeless, trapped feeling when they thought of 
Kaethe. 

Some thirteen years before she had married a 
brilliant young professor of biology at the Uni¬ 
versity, who now, as he accurately and baldly stated, 
earned far less than the women who kept the toilets 
at the Railway stations. . . . 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


39 

They Had seven children,—lovely, white-skinned, 
pansy-eyed, golden-haired children, or glowing¬ 
faced, starry-eyed, brown-haired. Kaethe’s was 
indeed a terrible situation, one that made her rela¬ 
tives sad or angry according to their various tem¬ 
peraments and philosophical reactions to life. 
Three of those children had been born, illadvisedly, 
during the War and another since the Peace. Mizzi 
had soundly aired her opinion of that last arrival, 
ending with her usual “dumm, but dumm!” and cast¬ 
ing her eyes up. 

Out of the thick fog of his practical inexperience 
Professor Eberhardt had gropingly tried various 
and mostly unsuccessful ways of providing for his 
family, ways unrelated to his brains and his technical 
skill, which suddenly seemed not of the slightest 
value. Time apparently was the only thing he had 
and he was directly, unpleasantly aware of its use¬ 
less passage. He’d lived mostly in a blessed, time¬ 
less world of theory and experiment. Courses were 
only intermittently held at the University, in half 
empty aula reached through dusty, echoing corri¬ 
dors. There was no money to keep up the labora¬ 
tories and the few students were apt to be as listless 
from undernourishment as the professors them¬ 
selves, or fiercely, disturbingly, redly subversive of 
everything and everybody; and anyway the struggle 
to keep life in the body was so terrible that it quite 


40 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


chilled any desire to know how it came to be there 
in the first place. Nature’s secrets, except of the 
harvests, were at an entire discount. 

He had duly tried several forms of those man¬ 
ual labors that alone seemed to be worth money. 
The summer before he had helped with the crops on 
a farm in Styria that a brother professor of geology, 
whose case somewhat resembled his own, had told 
him about. At first he had dreadful backaches and 
his long, delicate hands that could hold a microscope 
or a retort so steadily, would shake after the day’s 
work and his thin palms were one great blister. 
Horrified he would hold them out at evening and 
watch them tremble and wonder would they ever be 
steady again for use in the laboratory. He had, 
however, made what seemed to his inexperience 
quite a lot of money for that sort of work, and he 
never knew what the peasants really thought of him. 
Some of the money unfortunately had been stolen 
from him that last Sunday when he had been incon¬ 
tinently dreaming about a certain theory that could 
always, if he didn’t look out, captivate his atten¬ 
tion. . . . Still he brought home enough to get 
them through the autumn . . . and with what 
Fanny would do. • . . 

But suddenly, or so it seemed to him, the crown 
began to fall. He would sit flushing and paling as 
he read the descending quotations of the national 
currency and the rising prices of food. In a few 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


4i 


weeks that money was gone. The Eberhardts had, 
relatively, gorged when they saw it shrinking—next 
week it would be worth only half and the week after 
only a quarter. They laughed a good deal, too, 
Kaethe and the children. Kaethe even taught Lilli 
and Resl to waltz, humming “The beautiful, blue 
Danube” as they spun around. The professor al¬ 
lowed himself to think again of certain combinations 
. . . once quietly back in the laboratory. . . . 
Then came the collapse. 

In desperation he tried street-cleaning. A late 
November morning on looking out of the window he 
saw that it had snowed heavily during the night. In 
spite of himself the beauty of the little crystals ly¬ 
ing against the panes entranced him. He shook him¬ 
self free, however, of such luxurious and wasteful 
thoughts and decided to try for a chance to shovel 
off snow. He said nothing to Kaethe about it as 
he went briskly out. But it proved not to be much 
of an idea after all, for he got a heavy chill late that 
afternoon waiting in line to be paid, and when he 
passed by his brother-in-law’s office feeling very ill, 
Hermann had administered a potion to him and 
told him to go immediately to bed and stay there. 

About Christmas time he was put wise by another 
colleague, a professor of botany, to a certain ad¬ 
dress near the Stephansplatz where a midday meal 
of a sort was provided by foreign benevolence for 
starving university professors. A cup of cocoa, rice 


42 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


and a slice of bread; a cup of cocoa, beans and a 
piece of zwieback. It was not designed to fatten 
any of them; it was only meant to keep as many of 
them as possible above ground . . . keeping the 
sciences alive. . . . The calories were carefully 
marked on each menu and the men of learning could 
take their choice without paying. 

Professor Eberhardt went there every day, but 
with his own physical necessities ever so meagrely 
provided for, it was pure agony to go back to those 
rooms where seven hungry children and a pale wife 
awaited his return. He was always asked what he 
had had and how it had tasted. He was often able 
to slip the bread or the zwieback into his pocket, 
but there was no way of handling the cocoa and 
beans and rice except to eat them. 

Kaethe kept his only suit brushed and darned. 
Indeed it was getting to be one large darn with areas 
of the original cloth making patterns. She kept 
him in clean collars too, for a long time, but even 
at the last, with his coat collar turned up, he had the 
unmistakable air of a man of learning and a 
gentleman. 

He loved his wife and children greatly. But it 
was a terrible life, a cold, damp, under-nourished 
life, the things of the brain and the spirit slipping 
farther and farther from his sight. Brawn was in¬ 
deed what was wanted. . . . Unless one had that 
strange, mysterious but apparently essential thing 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


43 


called money,—that some had and some hadn’t. 
Professor Eberhardt had never been fanned, even 
gently, by any breeze of commercialism. . . . 

They had all been so proud of Leo and Kaethe in 
the old days; sometimes Leo’s name was mentioned 
in the newspapers and though they cared little and 
knew less about the congresses held in Vienna, 
they would quickly run their eyes over names and 
subjects, hunting for Leo’s and “as proud as dogs 
with two tails,” according to Hermann, when they 
discovered it. 

The plight of Leo and Kaethe and their lovely 
children kept the two women silent a long time. 
Just as the thought of Hermann had made them 
very still. ... In fact viewed from any angle, the 
family fortunes were now apt to engender silence. 

“Oh yes ... if Fanny . . . ,” said Tante Ilde 
at last, picking up the thread where they had some¬ 
what charily dropped it, “if Fanny . . .” 

She had to concede that going to Kaethe’s with 
something of the old familiar gesture of giving to 
those she loved rather than receiving from them, 
when obviously, they had none too much, put Thurs¬ 
day in quite a different light. 

“What do you think I could get to take them? 
How much do you think,” she paused musingly, 
“Fanny will send?” 

“I don’t know, but it will be enough. You can 
look around and see what you can get the most of 


44 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


for the money. There are so many of them,” she 
ended, the familiar phrase losing itself in a sigh. 

Too many of them, doubtless, and yet those lovely 
children,—each one a treasure, looking at you so con¬ 
fidingly with their big eyes in shades of blue, except 
Resl’s and Hansi’s darkly flashing,—which one of 
them would you not want? Not want Elsa who had 
a way of snuggling close and seeking your hand as 
she looked up with those heaven-blue eyes? Not 
want Carli, that gold and white angel of three sum¬ 
mers, who couldn’t yet walk, his little legs would 
crumple up under him when he tried to stand up, 
but he could smile in a way that went to your heart, 
and as for the baby, a thing of such sweetness that 
one wanted to eat her up. She was still at pale 
Kaethe’s breast; rosy and fat, though heaven alone 
knew how or why; and all the others. Lilli whose 
beauty made you hold your breath; Resl to whom 
something nice was always happening, and Maxy 
with his plans for supporting the family when he 
grew up. Any one of them would have been the 
pride and joy of a childless home. . . . 

Tante Ilde felt herself pleasantly excited at the 
thought of Thursday,—relieving want—no matter 
how—instead of adding to it. Her eyes got quite 
bright. 

Corinne, seeing the change, continued gayly, 
almost. 

“And Friday, now guess,” she paused, “Friday 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


45 


you’ll have dinner with me. I’ll let you know where 
and we’ll talk everything over. What fun it will 
be! Saturday, I haven’t arranged for Saturday 
yet but I’ll tell you in time. Sunday we don’t have 
to plan about. I’ll come as usual with the meat 
for the boys’ stew, and we’ll have a nice time all to¬ 
gether. Perhaps in a few months we can arrange 
something quite different. It’s only to get you over 
the winter . . . and you’ll have courage,” she ended 
entreatingly. Courage, that angel, she was thinking 
miserably to herself, as the unalterableness of her 
aunt’s doom became more and more apparent. 

But suddenly it all seemed quite possible, even 
easy to Tante Ilde. Yes, she would, she could be 
brave. She had Corinne ... as long as she had 
Corinne. . . . Corinne was so clever too, anything 
might happen when Corinne took the reins in her 
slim, elfin way, guiding life quickly, lightly along 
over the roughest spots. 

“Now, dearest, don’t worry about a single 
thing,” Corinne repeated faintly, the iron very deep 
in her soul as at last she got up and stood lingeringly 
by her aunt’s chair. She had again that horrible 
realization of something irreparable being in pro¬ 
cess. It sharpened her features and muffled her 
voice. “I’ll see Frau Kerzl on the way out and pay 
her up till tomorrow morning, and you can leave 
early.” For all her glimmering smile and close em¬ 
brace she was increasingly consternated at the col- 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


46 

lapse of her aunt’s existence, not even slightly con¬ 
cealed behind their words. She loved her more 
than ever in her final and inevitable rout, for pity 
was swelling abundantly her love. But the world! 
It cared little for old ladies in flight before Fate. . . . 

That courage momentarily imparted to Frau 
Stacher by her niece’s loving nearness fell heavily 
with the dragging hours in which more and more 
miserably she went about the dim, chilly room, 
emptying the bureau and wardrobe of their scanty 
contents and laying them in her shabby valises. 
The very old brown leather one dated from her 
wedding trip, for Frau Stacher had never been a 
traveller; it had always been pleasanter to stay at 
home or go only to very near places for the day. 
Now strangely she was become a pilgrim, and when 
she was hungry she was to eat of other people’s 
bread and she must go up other people’s stairs for 
shelter. The realization of the power of those 
nieces over her life terrified her. It was complete 
if they chose to exercise it. Withdrawal of their 
protection, she starved, she froze—just the not hav¬ 
ing those few thousand crowns a year put her at 
the world’s mercy. . . . 

Even Frau Kerzl’s quite unctuous attentions at 
that last supper of cabbage-turnip soup failed to dis¬ 
pel the deepening gloom of her heart. Frau Kerzl 
was obviously though politely rejoicing. She had 
indeed through an incredible bit of luck secured 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


47 


that foreigner, an Englishman too, who would pay 
in shillings, in the magic “Devisen,” for that room in 
which the very next night he was to sleep,—as soon 
as that,—Frau Kerzl already basked and expanded 
in the approaching light and heat of those shillings. 
The long Englishman strangely, hated short, square 
feather beds and was bringing his own blankets. It 
appeared, too, that he was in the commissary de¬ 
partment of a certain relief society. Anything 
could grow out of such a situation,—condensed milk, 
butter, oatmeal. . . . The arrangement was un¬ 
deniably of a marvelous fertility. 

Though Frau Stacher was truly glad of Frau 
Kerzl’s good luck, it but emphasized her own im¬ 
pending homelessness. She had been quite miser¬ 
able there, but at least her living-space had been 
provided with a door, and blessed with a key,—ulti¬ 
mate desirabilities as she now saw, and tomorrow 
she would move into the uncertain privacy of the 
alcove. Then, too, in some way that she couldn’t 
define Irma, her young sister-in-law, terrified her. 

Yes, homeless, in a new sense, she realized her¬ 
self to be when she went back into the luxury of her 
solitude for the last time, and as she closed the 
door she knew, indeed, that she had “lived too 
long.” . . . 

In that bed, abundantly salted by the tears of her 
uncertainties, so soon to know the deep slumbers of a 
care-free Englishman, Frau Stacher lay long awake 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


48 

thinking of those homes, over whose thresholds, 
day by day, week by week, she was to step. . . . 
She would love them so much, she would be so grate¬ 
ful, she would hold so sacred the joys and sorrows 
which might be disclosed. . . . 

But they seemed to her tired body to live, those 
nieces of hers, at the ultimate points of the Viennese 
compass. Her feet and back ached at the bare 
thought of those endless, cobbly streets, windswept, 
wet by rain and snow. All roads led to Calvary. 
Those once charming streets of the Imperial City 
were now but so many ways to the hill of charity, 
and it was a hill that old age crept up timidly, anx¬ 
iously. The cross was so surely at the top. . . . 
Then she bethought herself how the days of the 
week came only one at a time, the way after all that 
life was tempered to mortality, one day, one thing 
at a time. . . . 

But it wasn’t only troubles of food and raiment, 
of shelter; Frau Stacher had grave theological dif¬ 
ficulties as well, encrusted confusingly about the 
admonition: “Be not solicitous for your life, what 
you shall eat or for your body what you shall put 
on . . . for your Father knoweth that you have 
need of all these things.” No, she had no slightest 
understanding; and faith was but the dimmest of 
night-lights, flickering so uncertainly that the dark 
masses of her difficulties alone were apparent. She 
seemed to be caught terrifyingly between her needs 


THEIR AUNT ILDE 


49 

reduced though they were, really only a bed and 
enough food to keep her alive, and the Divine with¬ 
holding of those things. No, she couldn’t under¬ 
stand, and all through that last long night at Frau 
Kerzl’s she hung shiveringly over the dim puzzle of 
her life, which once had fallen so easily into its 
bright and pleasant pattern. . . . 

For the dozenth time she pulled the little, hard, 
square feather bed, disdained of the Englishman, 
about her shoulders and drew her knees up under it. 
At last out of her chill bewilderment she began to 
think of Kaethe, of taking her the Thursday dinner, 
of what she could get, in a world now filled mostly, 
it seemed, with inedible substances. The thought 
of giving, even vicariously, lighted in her a glowing 
eagerness. She found herself suddenly quite warm, 
even to her ankles and feet, and as the late January 
light began to filter in through the cracks of the 
brown rep curtains she fell, mercifully, into a deep 
slumber. 















LIESEL AND OTTO 









II 


LIESEL AND OTTO 
Allegretto amoroso . 

Sorgen sind fur 
Morgen gut. 

When belated and hurriedly Frau Stacher finally 
got away from Frau Kerzl’s, it was somewhat as a 
little war-bark after its time is up, leaves an unpleas¬ 
ant port, but still a port, and puts out to sea in sure 
signs of rough weather. 

The once fat and merry Gusl had had one of his 
worst nights; spasms of coughing were coming 
through the open door of the so-called south room 
as the two women stood together for a last time in 
the sombre little hallway, sadly stencilled in terra 
cotta on dark blue. The haggard agony on that 
mother’s face gave Frau Stacher a deep stab ac¬ 
companied by the first and only realization in her 
childless heart of the pain mothers know for doomed 
children. It was something so sudden, so poignant, 
as she stood saying a somewhat lifeless goodbye, 
(she hadn’t yet pulled herself together after being 
abruptly awakened out of that timeless, death- 
53 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


54 

like sleep by Frau Kerzl’s loud knock,) that had it 
remained with her an instant longer she would have 
fallen in a heap. It seemed to her that now she 
was always running full tilt into griefs she had never 
even suspected in the veiled and pleasant years. 

The ring of the hungry colonel, only incompletely 
disguised as a porter, who came to get her folding 
straw basket and her two lean valises, broke in on 
the distress of the two women. Frau Kerzl forget¬ 
ting for a moment the blessings that would so surely 
follow the Englishman into the house, embraced 
her, suddenly regretful, in a rush of hot tears; Frau 
Stacher’s sympathy was so immediate, so real that 
it seemed to stand there with them. They hung a 
moment lip on cheek murmuring to each other 
“courage” and again and again “auf Wiedersehen 
then turned to their now separate paths, Frau 
Kerzl running back to her son’s room at a faint and 
gurgling sound and Frau Stacher to continue what 
she called, (though no one knew it,) her “March 
among the Ruins,” walking close behind the porter, 
sweating a neurasthenic sweat, in the raw January 
air under his unaccustomed load. She felt safer 
quite near him for those once cosy, familiar streets 
seemed now to converge to the unknown, to infinity 
even, and the proximity of her valises somewhat 
steadied her. With genteel, restrained little steps, 
her elbows pressed to her sides, her hands clasped 
in front holding her umbrella and her shabby little 


LIESEL AND OTTO 


55 


bag that always came unfastened if she didn’t look 
out and somebody would tell her it was open, she 
proceeded to the street off the Hoher Markt where 
Irma, her brother’s widow, half starved with her 
three boys on the famous pension, together with 
what various members of the family gave her and 
what she herself made by her beautiful “petit point,’’ 
dimming every year a little more those once hard, 
bright eyes. 

Irma knowing that hunger stalked just around the 
corner, yet desiring to live alone with her boys, had 
been immensely relieved and at the same time al¬ 
most uncontrollably irritated at the thought of the 
arrangement by which Tante Ilde was to be given 
the very relative freedom of the alcove. She had 
gone about the simple preparations for her taking 
possession in the best obstructionist manner. The 
alcove already contained the old brown plush divan, 
relic of the house in Baden, but Irma had shown an 
amazing unwillingness to clear out a certain little 
green and yellow chest of drawers which had “al¬ 
ways” been between the windows in her living room 
and contained an unrelated accumulation of objects. 

“But she’s got to have something to keep her 
things in!” Corinne had cried, at the time the fatal 
arrangement was being made. 

This was so obvious that Irma had made no 
further demur than to say: “I didn’t think she had 
that much left.” 


56 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


“You’ve never heard about the lilies of the field?” 
Corinne asked with her most oblique look, but it was 
lost on Irma who said: 

“What?” as she noisily dragged the chest of 
drawers into the alcove. 

“How these little pebbles hurt my feet,” mur¬ 
mured Corinne further, and when Irma answered: 
“What hurts your feet?” she turned aside. Irma 
was clearly impervious. But she had emptied the 
drawers—all except the top one—quite ostenta¬ 
tiously. Various blessings flowed from Corinne, 
who brought their Sunday dinner and who could be 
counted on to get the often expensive materials for 
her needlework; she knew, too, that Corinne from 
time to time gave Mizzi a finely-pointed thrust of 
truth about what Irma called “jewing her down” in 
her prices. Corinne could quietly cut to the bone. 
Irma had been a skillful needlewoman even in the 
old days, now through Mizzi she kept abreast of the 
latest styles. That season the rage was for motifs 
of “petit point” which were being inserted in Suede 
handbags, making one of the famous Viennese 
leather novelties. She had once received 80,000 
crowns, when 80,000 was something, for a tiny 
medallion, so fine that she had only been able to 
work on it on warm summer mornings with the win¬ 
dow open, even the glass panes seemed to blur it 
somewhat, though that north window up those five 


LIESEL AND OTTO 


57 

flights of stairs was certainly as good a place as one 
could have for working. 

Irma being without sensibility, unconnected with 
her boys, had said further to Corinne on that same 
occasion: 

“Business is business,” at which Corinne had in¬ 
effectually protested that it was just what it wasn’t, 
—business. 

“You know how I am situated with the three 
boys,” Irma had answered, in the same tone she 
would have used to give new information rather 
than to discuss a situation already threadbare, “so 
much for a cup of coffee in the morning and you 
know what bread costs, then the soup in the eve¬ 
ning—a plateful—she won’t need the thick part of 
it,” she proceeded baldly, “the boys are growing and 
so hungry. She’ll only need something to warm her 
up and when you think that she will have eaten well 
every day at noon, she’ll get on all right.” 

The family had never been able to accustom them¬ 
selves to the shock of certain unexpected thoughts 
appearing quite unclothed and without the least 
shame from Irma’s most intimate being. A chill 
visited Corinne’s backbone at the reference to the 
thin part of the soup, and a white point appeared in 
her eyes, glacial as an iceberg in blue water, which, 
however, did not attract Irma’s attention nor reduce 
her temperature. She was, anyway, a woman who 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


58 

easily got red in the face and was always saying how 
hot she was when others were half frozen. 

Having thus delivered herself of her inner 
thoughts she had proceeded to draw, not uncheer- 
fully, two nails out of the kitchen wall and 
drive them neatly, loudly, deafeningly into two 
light-grey roses in the brown wall-paper of the al¬ 
cove, near the curtain where they wouldn’t be seen, 
and just a little too high to be reached comfortably. 
She had then duly sewed the hook and eye on the 
curtains under Corinne’s very gaze and zealously, 
inexpensively flicked away any possible dust from 
the gilt-framed engraving of Haydn leading the 
young Mozart by the hand, and the flat white and 
gilt vase on the little bracket underneath, sole em¬ 
bellishments of the alcove. But all the same in 
order to feel the least bit amiable about it Irma had 
to keep reminding herself that her sister-in-law 
would be paying for that same alcove. Indeed, with 
a second bare, arctic look also lost on Irma, Corinne 
had put the money for it for a whole month in ad¬ 
vance into her hand. She had felt like snatching 
her treasure up in her arms, conveying her a hun¬ 
dred, a thousand miles and setting her down in 
some warm and pleasant spot. And this, this was 
what she had prepared for her, this quite evident 
place of tribulation. She made no answer to Irma’s 
last words beyond drawing her lips thinly together. 
They had all learned that they couldn’t get at their 


LIESEL AND OTTO 


59 


father’s widow except through her sons, but just as 
soon as she could turn around she’d get another 
niche for her Dresden china auntie. . . . 

No one, not even Corinne was ever to know what 
Frau Stacher’s thoughts or rather feelings were, as 
soundlessly, in the narrow confines of the alcove, she 
unpacked her few possessions. When those de¬ 
signed for the lower drawer of the little chest were 
laid in, it stuck obstinately in a three cornered way 
as she tried to close it. The upper one had proved 
to be still full of old letters, postcards and photo¬ 
graphs. A faded reminder of Heinie and Irma 
with knapsacks and alpenstocks off on their honey¬ 
moon in the Dolomites, caught her eye, which was 
further held by a likeness of her unsuspecting self 
staring at her from under an oak in the Stadtpark at 
Baden, with Anna’s baby, the first-born grandchild 
on her knee. And this was to what it was all lead¬ 
ing up she thought in unaccustomed irritation, as 
she gave another push to the lower drawer, which 
went in with a jerk that left her breathless. When 
she wanted to hang up her coat she found that she 
had to stand on the divan to reach the nail. Her 
eyes taking in the details of that very evident tent of 
a night were at their palest, scarcely a trace of blue 
left in them. She was quite alone. Irma waiting 
impatiently to open the door for her sister-in-law s 
belated arrival had almost immediately departed to 
engage in the protracted and militant operation of 


6o 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


marketing. The three boys were at school. Irma’s 
welcome had been hasty and without warmth. The 
room itself was cold with the insidious chill of a 
room in a damp climate that has not had a fire in it 
since the day before. The white porcelain stove, as 
Frau Stacher stepped shiveringly over to it possessed 
not even a reminder of heat, though she put her 
hands knowingly on certain tiles, hoping possibly to 
find one still warm from the previous evening. Irma 
never lighted the fire till the boys got back in the 
afternoon. She herself would sit at her embroidery 
frame with a round, grey, stone bottle of hot water, 
wrapt in a piece of old flannel, in her lap. Frau 
Stacher tried to think that the place would be 
warmer in many ways when the boys came home. 

Then the cuckoo clock struck eleven hollow 
strokes and hurriedly she began to lay out her very 
best things to wear to Liesel’s. Liesel adored good 
clothes and always noticed what people wore. A 
large part of her conversation was about making 
over old things or the possibility of getting new 
ones, and the discussion of what was being worn 
that season and might be worn the next could induce 
in her sensations bordering on rapture. 

Frau Stacher was still wearing for “best” with a 
measure of decency, some stancher remnants of the 
years of plenty. She now proceeded to put on her 
black cloth suit with the embroidered black and 
white lapels, the last thing she had bought before 


LIESEL AND OTTO 61 

her “crac,” arranging softly about her neck, which 
was already encircled by a bit of narrow black vel¬ 
vet, a certain piece of oft-washed and much-mended 
old lace that she had worn for twenty years, pinning 
it with an oxydized silver bar pin on which was 
stamped “Karlsbad,” unlosable, valueless relic of a 
journey in the happier days. She carefully brushed 
her black hat, with its purple velvet knot faded into 
grey, giving it a few supplementary pinches and pats 
before putting it on, instinctively at an angle that 
was dignified, even becoming; then she rolled tightly 
her black cotton umbrella and drew on her neatly 
darned black gloves. She paused on the threshold to 
give a strange, pale glance about the familiar room 
become suddenly not only unfamiliar, but odious. 
The cold north light lay whitely upon it, bringing 
out every thread in the worn spots of the old rug, 
by the door, under the table, as you went into the 
kitchen; she remembered that Heinie’s feet had had 
their part in wearing them threadbare, Heinie now 
seven years in his grave. There by the window was 
the unwieldy, red upholstered armchair that he had 
sat in all through that last winter of his life, with 
smooth, shining, dark spots on the arms and at the 
top. She shivered again but this time it was not 
from the cold of the room. As she passed out, her 
arms held more closely than ever to her sides, her 
head very erect, her little pride all indeed that she 
had left to her out of a whole life full of things, she 


6 2 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


still looked the Frau Commercial Advisor Stacher, 
born von Berg. Her gentility was ineffaceable. 


Liesel was busy in the tiny kitchen when her aunt 
rang gently, apologetically. As she opened the 
door an entrancing smell, unmistakably of fresh 
noodles in fresh butter, was wafted on the air. It 
wasn’t the sort of scent that hung around Frau 
Kerzl’s apartment nor about Irma’s. Frau Stacher 
found herself sniffing it up eagerly, and certainly 
Liesel’s warm welcome fittingly accompanied it. 
Where on earth did Liesel get the butter? she was 
thinking as she felt her niece’s bright cheek against 
hers and her soft breast warmly near. Her spirits 
began to rise. She was momentarily out of sight 
and hearing of the combat for food, enveloped sus- 
tainingly in that delightful union of scents—above 
lilies and roses—fresh flour, fresh, warm butter! 
Her heart was suddenly flooded with an immense 
gratitude, not alone for the food, as she returned 
the soft embrace. 

It was a comfortable little living room into which 
she then stepped, crowded with furniture, mostly 
Biedermayer, that had belonged to Otto’s mother 
and his grandmother before her. Mellow, pale 
brown furniture decorated here and there with a 
black motif. A writing desk, with high shelves and 
glass doors destined for books, now held a mauve 


LIESEL AND OTTO 63 

and white tea-set in old Vienna ware. A green 
porcelain stove stood in one corner and was begin¬ 
ning to give forth its gentle heat. Liesel lighted 
it about an hour before Otto returned and then all 
day long into the evening it could be depended on 
to give out generously its pleasant, even warmth. 
Between it and the window were Otto’s armchair 
and his special stool for his lame leg, near it a little 
table with a rack for his pipes, his wallet of tobacco 
and a box of Trabucos. Otto had to have his cigar 
after supper and when luxuriously he had smoked it 
he would pull at his pipe and read the Wiener Jour¬ 
nal or perhaps get out his flute. They talked of 
renting a piano when things got better and then 
Liesel could play his accompaniments. After busy 
days, pleasant evenings. Liesel’s deft fingers were 
always at work salvaging something old,—her darn¬ 
ing was famous in the family, or smartly fashioning 
something new. She had a way of standing in 
front of him and asking him if the stripes were more 
becoming across or up and down, or she would sit 
in his lap and ask him if his treasure could wear her 
dress as short as that, only so much stuff, every 
centimeter counted, that enchanted his uxorious soul. 
He would pinch her ankles and say that anybody 
who wore a 3 5 shoe could do as she liked, or as far 
up as the police permitted, and Liesel would be de¬ 
lighted and laugh and laugh. After hearing what 
had happened at the Ministry, she would tell of 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


64 

those even more vitally interesting visits to provision 
shops, where evidently the tradespeople liked to 
see her, and as far as was wise she would let him 
into the secret of her ways of ferreting out the 
little that was hidden; her ready smile, those two 
soft dimples and her even softer brown eyes count¬ 
ing for much in such operations. Once, but that was 
in the very beginning, she had started to tell Otto 
of the quite fresh remarks of the cheesemonger— 
a good looking fellow—but he’d pouted for two 
days and though secretly Liesel was gratified by 
these signs of jealousy—once in awhile, like that— 
in the end she wisely kept the not at all displeasing 
personal attentions she received while marketing to 
herself. 

Liesel had no books and never dreamed of open¬ 
ing the newspaper,—world-events were nothing 
to her. After supper as she sewed, Otto would 
sometimes read her amusing bits under the caption 
“Around about the Globe”: “A dangerous Don 
Juan,” “The most useful tree in the world,” “The 
Adonis of the American film world,” “Solemn 
mourning for a cat,” and such like. Liesel adored 
cats. She wanted a cat, a piano and a baby; other¬ 
wise she had really little left to wish for. 

Occasionally they followed a case through the 
criminal courts, especially if it had an amusing side. 
Liesel loved to laugh and laugh she often did in the 
weeping city. . . . And a jewel robbery made her 


LIESEL AND OTTO 65 

eyes shine. But Liesel’s real use for newspapers 
was to soak them in water, then roll them into tight 
balls and set them to dry. They made excellent 
fuel, one or two, put knowingly into the porcelain 
stove with a couple of briquets. There were always 
a few drying on the window-ledge in the kitchen. 

Otto’s own reactions to the problems of the 
Fatherland as set forth in the Press were not much 
more vigorous than his wife’s. When he read of a 
new difficulty he would in his mind straightway 
blame some far-off, unreachable individual or cir¬ 
cumstance for the national misfortunes in general 
and particular. He had then done all that could 
be required of him; effort was ended and he was 
quits with the situation. He didn’t blame openly 
the Republic, he got his living and his Liesel’s from 
it as from the Monarchy, and he rarely used the 
now familiar expression “Dos homma von da Re- 
publik,” (that’s the fault of the Republic) but he 
thought it. It was, further, a source of evils, that 
he, Otto Steiner, could not be expected to purify. 
What, indeed, could he do about the Republic, about 
the Jews, about the Freemasons, about the Ex¬ 
change? Nothing, quite evidently nothing, and it 
let him comfortably out of all responsibility. He 
just kept on at his work, came home to his Liesel, 
who in turn pursued her agreeable and busy round 
of making him happy. So endless were the 
combinations and strategies involved in this once 


66 VIENNESE MEDLEY 

simple matter that she had her hands and time full. 

She felt very sorry for her Tante Ilde, losing her 
money and being old and alone, for Kaethe and her 
children, for Irma and the boys, and sometimes she 
took them things to eat. Quite often she found 
her way to Mizzie’s shop where she was always sure 
of a warm welcome, for undeniably Liesel under¬ 
stood the niceties of Mizzi’s business. She some¬ 
times even thought of going in with her, but she felt 
that she was, momentarily at least, better employed 
in using Otto’s salary to the fullest advantage, and 
“with things as they are,” (which was Liesel’s 
nearest approach to intellectual participation in the 
national misfortunes) that took all her time and 
thought. Standing in those everlasting cues, run¬ 
ning as she said, “from Pontius to Pilatus,” bringing 
everything home herself, though the aged porter at 
the corner of the Kohlmarkt and the Wallner- 
strasse always helped when it was a question of 
coals, glad to serve once more a handsome woman, 
—handsome in the traditional way he so thoroughly 
understood. Liesel would listen, quite truly in¬ 
terested, as they walked along to his tales of other 
days when gentlemen were “cavaliers” and ladies 
hard to win; of whilom young attaches at the not 
distant Foreign Office, that imposing Ballplatz, who 
had been wont to send him with love letters and 
flowers and bonbons. The telephone had given the 
first blow to such romantic expressions of love; and 


LIESEL AND OTTO 67 

as for the War and the Peace, they were equally and 
finally calamitous. . . . 

She could well afford to greet her aunt lovingly, 
and her “dearest aunties” and her “how sweet you 
look” and her “I’m so glad to have you,” came 
gushingly out of the abundance of her heart. She 
was so happy that she could add cheer to her food 
without the slightest effort. 

The table was already spread. Aunt Ilde’s in¬ 
voluntary though delicate glance showed her three 
places set, just the same for all; three wine glasses, 
three plates, three knives even, (on those knife-rests 
that she had so fortunately added to the coffee 
spoons and napkin rings when Liesel was married,) 
knives meant meat, but she then and there made up 
her mind not to take any—perhaps a 1 little wine. 
The carafe stood on the table filled with a Voslauer, 
a pleasant, light, open wine, gently quite gently 
warming to the stomach. It grew on those very 
slopes about Baden. 

Then she bethought herself cheerfully of the mo¬ 
ment, when she would say to Liesel: “Now you 
stay with Otto, I’m going to do the dishes, but I 
must have an apron.” 

She had taken her things off and hung them up 
on one of the pegs in the little hallway. She had 
wished even as she did so that she didn’t have to 
leave them there. They’d be the first things Otto 
would see and perhaps . . . But such misgivings 


68 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


and some others had given way before that delicious 
odor and Liesel’s warm welcome. She looked so 
pretty, so appetizing, in that big, pink apron. 
As she went back into the kitchen her aunt could 
hear her singing an old waltz from the “Graf von 
Luxenburg,” “Bist meine liebe, kleine Frau.” 

Frau Stacher had for a moment the illusion that 
she was still living at Baden and that she had only 
come in for the day. There, too, was her little in¬ 
laid worktable that had belonged to her own mother 
and that Liesel had taken for safekeeping when the 
house was given up. She’d always kept her wools 
and her fine darning in it and Liesel did the same. 

“Can’t I help?” she asked, as she continued to 
look at it, rent by a sudden, terrible homesickness, 
that made her voice quite weak. 

“No, you just sit quiet and rest. Everything is 
ready. It’s time for Otto to come, anyway,” Liesel 
answered with a look at her wrist watch. “He’s al¬ 
ways to the minute. He only has an hour for dinner 
and must find everything ready.” 

Indeed as she spoke the rattle of a key was 
heard at the front door. She flew to it. There 
were the unmistakable, immemorial sounds of em¬ 
bracing and then a whispered word from Liesel. 

“Ach, yes, yes,” Tante Ilde heard him answer. 

He had hung up his green plush hat with the little 
grey feather at the back on its own invariable peg, 
had divested himself of his overcoat, with its rather 


LIESEL AND OTTO 


69 

high, tight belt and hung it up on the next by Tante 
Ilde s hat and coat, just as she had known he would, 
but without the inhospitable thoughts her humility 
had attributed to him. As he entered he was comb¬ 
ing his hair and moustache with his little pocket 
comb and smiling his somewhat fatuous smile. 

Otto Steiner was the son of a small government 
official, the grandson of one. He had gone into the 
Ministry of Agriculture when he was eighteen, and 
had been there seven years, when at a certain hour 
the war found him, in a certain room, at a certain 
desk, bending over a certain big ledger. And out of 
that secure and dusty routine, as natural to him as 
breathing, he had been thrown to the Russian front, 
then to the French front where he had been 
wounded. He had been healed and thrown to the 
Italian front, every nerve in his body making its 
agonized appeal against going through certain per¬ 
fectly definite horrors again. He was thankful 
when his knee, which was supposed to be quite cured, 
began once more to stiffen and swell, when in a short 
time quite certainly he wouldn’t be able to get about 
and they’d have to send him home. Then before he 
could be demobilized he had been taken prisoner and 
put in that Italian camp where his feet had frozen. 
Such strange things to happen to one who found 
his pleasure as well as his daily bread in those dusty 
ledgers, and whose conversation was largely made 
up of references to “Das Ministerium.” It was one 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


70 

of the first words he remembered from his childhood 
days, as familiar as “guten Morgen.” 

Now after all the agonies, the incredible agonies, 
it had been granted to him, out of so many who had 
been heaped in nameless graves everywhere in 
Europe, to be coming into his own home from that 
very same Ministry, greeted by that delightful odor 
of food, prepared by a beloved, loving and lovely 
wife. “I’m certainly lucky,” he often said to him¬ 
self and asked no further grace of heaven than to 
grow old in the Ministry, moving slowly, as his for¬ 
bears had moved, up through various rooms, indica¬ 
tive of various grades. 

He was pale and wore eye-glasses. His face was 
the somewhat round-cheeked face of the average 
Viennese, with rather small nose and rather full lips 
under a brown moustache. Unmistakably a gov¬ 
ernment employee who would set no river on fire but 
could be depended on to go his serviceable little way, 
hour by hour, day by day, year by year . . . the 
traditional “rond de cuir.” 

There were always rumors of reducing the num¬ 
ber of employees, but Steiner’s work was so exact, 
his handwriting and figures so beautifully neat, that 
he was as safe as anybody in those unsafe days. He 
could, furthermore, answer any question put to him 
by any superior, even the strange questions of new 
men, who, momentarily “protected,” came into the 


LIESEL AND OTTO 


7 i 

Ministry in the upper grades, passing in and then 
out. The administration was fairly snowed under 
by employees. It was reckoned often, (not, how¬ 
ever, by those employed, they kept such statistics as 
much as possible to themselves) that 750,000 out 
of the 2,500,000 lived on and by the different de¬ 
partments of government. But mostly their po¬ 
sitions were no more secure than yellowing leaves 
in Autumn. A gust of zeal on the part of some one 
high up and they fell in showers from the gov¬ 
ernmental tree, disappearing into the dark, wet, 
windy streets of hyemal Vienna. The question with 
each and every one was how to hang on. . . . 

Hydrocephalous Austria, with that terrible will 
to live ! A mangled trunk supported its great head, 
Vienna. The members through which the blood 
should have circulated had been lopped off, the head 
was growing bigger, sicker. . . . 

But Otto Steiner wasn’t thinking of any of these 
things as he greeted his aunt Ilde. He saluted her 
affectionately; some not very urgent realization that 
she “had had it hard” put an additional cordiality 
into his voice. He was further melted by the odor 
of those fresh noodles and hot butter just as she 
had been. 

A sizzling sound, like sweetest music, coming from 
the kitchen, next fell on their ears. Liesel disap¬ 
peared anxiously. 


72 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


“What have you got today?” he cried through 
the door, “do I really smell noodles and butter? 
I’m just dying of hunger!” 

A moment after, Liesel, divested of her pink 
apron, in the neatest one-piece dark blue dress, a red 
leather belt holding it snugly about her waist, ap¬ 
peared rosily bearing a smoking black and white 
checkered soup tureen. Little tendrils of dark hair 
lay softly, damply about her brow, her dimples were 
very deep, her eyes very bright. She was sure of 
that soup, cunningly made of left-over crusts of 
black bread, roasted crisply in the oven and then 
ground up with a bountiful seasoning of onions and 
various other more discreetly sustaining herbs. On 
that dark January day it put heart into them all. 
Their spoons clicked joyously. Then those shining 
noodles! Liesel had strewn over them the crispest 
little heaps of fried crumbs. A very, very small 
golden-brown veal cutlet was put closely, significantly 
by Otto’s plate. Generally he and Liesel halved 
their small bits of meat, but today she set the ex¬ 
ample of taking none. It was plainly fitting that 
the wage-earner, the master should have it all and 
more especially in those days when nourishment was 
the first need, the last preoccupation. Above saving 
one’s soul for eternity was that of saving one’s body 
for a span. 

When the pale wine was poured out Liesel said 
sweetly: 


LIESEL AND OTTO 


73 

“We must drink to Tante Ilde’s health!” and 
Otto cried promptly, “Prosit” looking at her af¬ 
fectionately through his pince-nez, across the brim 
of his glass. 

She began to feel herself a new woman. Food, 
youth, love, happiness, the taste, the sight, the feel¬ 
ing of it all! Paradise in some way regained. She 
forgot that she was there as a poor old relative, who 
for decency’s sake, had to have her breath kept yet 
awhile in her body by the efforts and sacrifices of 
those of her blood; no, she was again Tante Ilde of 
Baden who would soon say: 

“Well, children, are you coming out to me for 
dinner on Sunday, and will you have an Apfelstrudel 
or an apricot tart?” 

Then Otto began to tell about the hard case of his 
friend, Karl Schober, who though a war-cripple had 
been inexplicably dismissed that very day. There 
were four cripples in Otto’s room, for that is where, 
—in the rooms of some Ministry, with a little “pro¬ 
tection,” they mostly and justly landed. After they 
had called it a shame, and unbelievable, and had 
given a shudder, (being dismissed in those times was 
like being condemned to death without the pre¬ 
liminary security of prison) insensibly they fell to 
talking of other days. Tante Ilde, who had for¬ 
gotten nothing that had ever happened to any of the 
children, began to tell the most interesting things 
about Liesel when she was little. How she had 


74 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


fallen from the apple tree in the garden of the 
Baden house and broken her wrist, and how Tante 
Ilde had held her other hand when the doctor was 
setting the bone and that Liesel had been so brave 
and hadn’t cried, at which Otto leaned over and 
gave his wife a pat on the arm. And the time she 
had taken Liesel to the races so conveniently near; 
Liesel remembered that well, that was the day she 
had first put her hair up and wore the lovely wine- 
colored dress with little pleated ruffles and had gone 
out with her aunt Ilde as Fraulein Bruckner instead 
of “die Liesel.” They had put money on a certain 
Herr Hafner’s four year-old and Liesel had actually 
won 20 Krones! 

Otto listened with his somewhat full lips parted, 
entranced by these tales of his treasure’s earliest 
youth, and all of a sudden they found they had eaten 
everything there was on the table and drunk every 
drop of wine, but they continued to sit for a while 
longer, pleasantly engaged in picking their teeth and 
sucking in their tongues. Liesel always did things 
well and kept the two little blue glass toothpick 
holders filled. They had been given by Mizzi, who 
went so far and no further in the matter of presents, 
even to some one she liked, on the occasion of Lie- 
sel’s marriage. When shown to the various mem¬ 
bers of the family they had, one and all, wondered 
how Mizzi had had the face. . . . 


LIESEL AND OTTO 


75 

Then when Otto lighted his Trabuco, Tante Ilde 
found herself saying just as she had planned: 

“I’m going to do the dishes. You stay with 
Otto, but I must have an apron.” 

Liesel had been very dear and had said: 

“But no, Tante Ilde, you mustn’t work when you 
come to us.” 

Suddenly her aunt’s eyes had filled with tears: 

“It would make me so truly happy,” she entreated. 
Then Otto had cried: 

“But yes, little goose, let Tante Ilde do as she 
will!” 

So Liesel stayed with Otto and as Tante Ilde went 
in and out she could hear them talking as if they 
hadn’t seen each other for a week, trying to decide 
if they would go, that very evening, to a cosy little 
cabaret in the Annagasse, a stone’s throw from their 
house and Liesel wear her new pink dress; or 
whether they would go to the Circus Busch movie in 
the Prater Stern, where it didn’t matter what you 
wore and where they were giving a wonderful moral 
drama in six acts called “Sinful Blood,” and where 
they would hold hands in the dark just as if they 
weren’t going to spend the night together. 

Tante Ilde herself even began to hum that waltz 
tune from the Graf von Luxenburg, though she had 
long been nobody’s “dear little wife.” 

When she was putting tenderly away in the tiny 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


7 6 

cupboard the white plates with the gold “S” that 
Liesel was also “keeping” for her, she got suddenly 
a quite unexpected whiff of the once familiar salami, 
proceeding irrepressibly from a tightly-tied up little 
package. 

“Sausage for Otto’s supper!” she murmured to 
herself, and then wondered if she were mistaken, 
though Liesel was equal to anything . . . but all 
without any envy. She’d had a good meal, flavored 
with love and happiness, and suddenly a thousand 
other thoughts and feelings pressed in upon her that 
she’d forgotten existed. She was increasingly glad 
of Liesel’s youth and love, that out of the starving, 
mourning city she had grasped her comfortable 
joy. . 

Finally Otto saying warmly, “auf Wiedersehen, 
Auntie,” had given her a sounding kiss on both 
cheeks, and placing several on Liesel’s red lips had 
contentedly limped off to the Ministry. 

Then Liesel had proceeded to initiate her into 
some of the secrets of her wonderful management, 
but as they were inseparable from her youth and 
dimples and shining eyes, they were of little practical 
use to her aged aunt. The fortune-teller whom 
Liesel had just consulted had assured her that she 
would have good luck in all her undertakings. One 
glance at Liesel’s open, happy face, framed in that 
glossy abundance of waving dark hair was enough 
to start the least gifted of seers off in the right di- 


LIESEL AND OTTO 


77 

rection. She had, further, informed her that a 
blond, blue-eyed woman was to be avoided. Liesel 
had stared at that, but when she told her aunt about 
it they avoided each other’s eyes, though Tante Ilde 
did murmur something about its being “singular.” 
Liesel was dying to keep the conversation on lines 
that would inevitably have led to the enthralling 
and inexhaustible topic of Fanny, but there were 
certain matters that you just couldn’t talk about with 
Tante Ilde, not when you could see her eyes, so Lie¬ 
sel only said that the fortune-teller had further told 
her that she had the exclusive love of a man with 
dark hair and eye-glasses who had been wounded in 
the war. Well, you had to admit that there was 
something in it all, when they hit so many nails on 
the head, (even though, as Tante Ilde couldn’t help 
thinking, those nails were positively sticking up ask¬ 
ing to be hit). 

Liesel found that having Tante Ilde for dinner 
wasn’t at all bad. On the contrary she had thor¬ 
oughly enjoyed it. At the end she gave her some 
macaroni and a few spoonsful of brown sugar to 
take home to Irma, also a couple of Otto’s old 
shirts; he had to look a certain way at the Ministry 
and she had darned those till they weren’t decent 
any more, but for the boys . . . And Liesel had 
been so sweet when she kissed her goodbye, say¬ 
ing, “Now, Auntie, don’t forget you’re to come 
next Monday and I’ll see about getting something 


78 VIENNESE MEDLEY 

extra nice for dinner. What about a Schmarrn?” 

Frau Stacher had positively tripped from the 
Annagasse to the Hoher Markt, in unaccustomed 
light-heartedness. “Happiness,—it’s even more 
contagious than misery,” she thought, grateful to 
have been exposed to the dear infection, and forgot 
that she’d been timid about going. 

But the extraordinary part about it all was that 
that good meal, instead of making her less hungry, 
seemed to engender an intolerable desire for an¬ 
other. She was just wild for more noodles and 
butter when night came, ready for a whole cutlet for 
herself. As they sat round the supper-table, the 
three hungry boys with their eyes on the soup-tureen, 
and Irma dipping the ladle in so carefully for Tante 
Ilde’s share that the few bubbles of life-giving fat 
would not slip into it, yet so shallowly that none of 
the thick part came up, then Tante Ilde was, for 
once, not faint for food, not at all. She was just 
wild for food. This, however, she was able to keep 
hidden in her breast. Indeed she was greatly 
ashamed of her sudden access of gluttony, and the 
next time she went to confession . . . 

When under the stimulating effect of the pleasant 
meal at Liesel’s, she had smilingly, but as it proved 
unwisely told Irma about the noodles and butter, 
Irma, taking some last stitches by the waning light of 
her north window, had listened with that intent ex¬ 
pression the habitually undernourished have in their 


LIESEL AND OTTO 79 

faces when food is being talked about, but her only 
answer had been: 

Well, with a meal like that you certainly won’t 
be able to eat any supper.” She had fairly snatched 
the sugar and macaroni from her sister-in-law’s 
hands, then she had held the shirts, embellished with 
their lace-like darns, up to the light, which had no 
difficulty in getting through, saying: 

“I should think she would send them! They’re 
on their last legs.” 

No, Irma couldn’t be gracious, she’d always been 
that way, even when she was young and pretty and 
sheltered; and since the Peace. . . . 

But when Frau Stacher finally dipped her spoon 
into that watery soup, after having broken into it 
the thin slice of bread pushed towards her by Irma’s 
careful yet resolute hand, she suddenly found that 
she didn’t really want even that, the boys ought to 
have every drop, every crumb. She felt old, tired, 
completely superfluous, and she would have loved 
above all things, even above food, to have had a 
room of her own wherein she could hide the shame 
of her superfluity, shut the door on it, turn the key 
and drop a few secret tears over it. . . . 

After the meal consumed with lightning rapidity 
by the hungry boys and more slowly cleared away 
by their mother and aunt, they all placed themselves 
around the table with its heavy red felt cover, and 
the boys began to do their lessons for the next day 


8o 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


in the light of the swinging lamp pulled down very 
low. Irma took out those shirts of Otto’s, holding 
them again up to the light and making a clicking 
sound with her tongue against her teeth as she did so. 

Then there was silence except for the rubbing of 
the boys’ feet on the chair rungs and floor, the turn¬ 
ing of the pages of their theme books and the ticking 
of the brown cuckoo clock with its long, swing¬ 
ing pendulum. 

Frau Stacher sat just outside the circle of light, in 
deep shadow; if she had put her hand out she could 
have touched the curtain of the alcove. She felt 
increasingly useless and lonely. They would be 
sitting there just the same if she were dead. 

Irma was continually taking off her glasses and 
wiping them on the piece of old linen she kept by her 
for that purpose. She knew her eyes were getting 
worse and sometimes she was very frightened. The 
light caught her big, capable hands, fell on the heap 
of white linen in her lap, glowed about the fringe 
of the little, red, three-cornered shawl crossed over 
her low, heavy breasts. She had brought it from 
Agram in those days that as the calendar ran were 
not so far away, but might have been, for all their 
resemblance to the present, of another century. 
Her face was left in deep shadow which did not 
soften something roughhewn about it. It was 
broad through the forehead and her cheeks with 
their deep-dyed spots of color had very prominent 


LIESEL AND OTTO 


81 


bones, her nose alone was the rather formless kind 
that escapes memory or description. Above her 
short, full upper lip was a dark duvet, like a thick 
smudge put on with a careless linger and getting 
darker every year. Twisted about her head were 
heavy coils of rather oily black hair that anxiety 
had neither greyed nor thinned, though her eyes, 
once so bright under that low, full forehead with 
those two other wide, black smudges for eyebrows, 
had got quite dull. It gave her a strange expression 
at times, all except the eyes keeping its freshness 
that way. She had good looks, the family had to 
admit it, in a bright, square, hard way, like a 
strongly-outlined, heavily-colored poster; like a 
poster of a peasant woman binding sheaves that 
one might come across in a Railway station, meant 
to be looked at from a distance and to encourage 
travel. But somehow Irma hadn’t worked out 
comfortably in the shorter perspectives of a city. 
Why Heinie had been mad about her, his sister had 
never understood. But Heinie had been a marrier. 
She couldn’t think of Heinie not married, though 
why just Irma, uncomplaisant, worrying Irma 
strayed into that Viennese world of theirs, familiar 
and dear to them as their own breath, with its com¬ 
fortable, care-free ways. There had been so many 
attractive young women about with easy smiles and 
pleasant habits who would have flavored his 
lengthening years. Now the family were, one and 


82 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


all, horribly bored by Irma, left heavily on their 
hands. They forgot that Pauli had said when his 
father-in-law married that she reminded him of a 
late harvest, with vermilion melons and stacks of 
yellow grain against black earth, and that Heinie 
knew winter was near. 

There in the shadow, her useless hands lying 
folded in her thin lap, her colorless head bent, her 
pale lids dropped close over her eyes, Frau Stacher 
shivered, suddenly remembering that phrase about 
winter being near. In the warm haze of the 
protracted Indian summer of her life she hadn’t in 
the least understood what it meant. She fell to 
thinking of that and of other long past things; of 
present things she had no thoughts, only confused, 
painful sensations, which were cutting deeper wrin¬ 
kles and scars in her face than all the living through 
of her pleasant three-score years and ten. 

Ferry, the eldest boy, thin and tall for his years, 
with very long black lashes shadowing his blue eyes 
and falling upon his thin cheeks with their tiny spot 
of bright color, had closed his books and taken a 
rattling, illy-jointed knife out of one coat pocket 
and a little figure in wood that he was working on 
out of the other. Even with that poor blade he 
had given it a touch of life,—a woman with her 
arms hanging at her sides. 

“I’m going to make two little buckets to put into 


LIESEL AND OTTO 83 

her hands, one for apples and one for pears,” he 
whispered to his mother as he held it up,—“see how 
she’s already bending under the weight,” he added 
with his slight but persistent cough. 

He had, for all his pale adolescence, a strong 
resemblance to his aunt Ilde. She had always 
cared a lot for Ferry; he’d been a snuggling, affec¬ 
tionate baby, something inexpressibly dear and un¬ 
expected in her elderly life; they had, in a way, she 
and her brother, forgotten such things. Now she 
was aware of a hot yearning to give him a new knife. 
From somewhere that knife must come. 

Gusl, the next, was formed in his mother’s image: 
thick-set, short with a certain roughness in his ways 
and those same bright, hard eyes under a full brow 
and shaggy dark hair. . . . The peasant caught 
in the city, and what he would do with the city or 
it with him was still tightly rolled on the lap of the 
gods. Ferry’s future was easier to foretell—he 
would betake himself and his talent to some garret 
and starve, after the immemorial way of poverty, 
youth and genius. Gusl hated desperately his books 
and he was always hungry. Any meal that his 
mother set out he could have eaten alone. Calories 
were nothing to him. He wanted lots, lots. But 
Ferry was always dreaming, sometimes even over 
his food. 

Little Heinie had almost immediately fallen 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


84 

asleep, leaning against the table, a ring of brown 
curls and two big ears catching the light as it played 
about his bent head. 

Yes, that was the way they would be sitting if 
she were not there, if she were dead. She felt 
thinly miserable, like something that had been and 
no longer was . . . like her own ghost. Irma was 
wiping her spectacles again. 

“Give me the mending,” said her sister-in-law, 
but somewhat timidly, she never quite knew what 
Irma would do, “I haven’t used my eyes today.” 

Irma passed it over to her silently and changed 
places with her. She felt a little less useless then; 
coming into the circle of light with the boys seemed 
to take her out of that shadowy, unpleasant world 
where superfluous, dependent old women were wait¬ 
ing uncertainly, wretchedly, to get into the cold 
grave. No, Irma’s ways were not comfortable 
ways, and it was all a part of the general misfit of 
things that it was Irma who was the widow and had 
the alcove and the three sons and needed help. 

When from time to time Ferry coughed, just a 
tiny cough, but quite regular, almost like the slow, 
sure tick of the clock, his mother’s black brows 
would contract at that spectre of the “Viennese 
malady” which had found its way into her home. 
Her sister-in-law wasn’t the only ghost there. 

Irma was from the Plitvicer Lakes, beyond Ag- 
ram, now become Serb. There was always that 


LIESEL AND OTTO 


85 

something rough, even fierce about her, not at all 
like the easy-going Viennese, not like the fiery Hun¬ 
garians, not like anything Frau Stacher was familiar 
with. Perhaps it was what had attracted Heinie. 
But she was vaguely afraid of it. 

Irma had at one time tried to go back to her own 
country, to her people, with her sons—a woman 
bringing sons would be welcome. Then the ex¬ 
traordinary, the unbelievable thing revealed itself. 
She found she didn’t exist there any more, no more 
than if she were dead; less than that even, for then 
she would have had a grave. Austrian papers were 
of no use to her and Servian papers she could not 
get. The little town where she was born, on the 
wild Milanovac Lake was no longer a Crownland. 
Her people were no longer her people; even her 
brother was no longer her brother. The white 
house with the warm brown roof and the vine grow¬ 
ing over the door that got so red in the autumn, and 
the chestnut tree that got so yellow, there in front 
with the circular seat—all that, their father’s leg¬ 
acy to them—she no longer had any share in it. 
There were, it appeared, many of these spots, these 
veritable no man’s lands, where children had no 
rights and strange people went over thresholds worn 
by parental feet and strange people slept in the 
beds they were born in. If only she could have 
gone back there with her boys and wrested her liv¬ 
ing in some way from the wild soil, . , . and Ferry 


86 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


in the mountain air! No wonder Irma was sombre, 
was fierce, and bore her sorrows heavily. 

Frau Stacher kept reminding herself of all this, 
but what could she or anybody do about it? They 
were all caught in a trap . . . simple and terrible as 
that. As she sat measuring the tuck in a shirt sleeve, 
she was suddenly aware of being worn to exhaustion 
with the changes and excitements of the new order of 
her days. Such desperate exertions just to keep 
the breath in her body! She wanted to get her 
clothes off, lie down, shut her eyes, be in darkness 
with the effortless night before her. But she sat on 
silently, drawing the thread weakly in and out of the 
thin stuff and now and then looking up at the boys. 
They were pale, but they were young. They could 
—even Ferry—expect more brightly-colored, fuller 
years. But for herself! . . . With difficulty she 
kept the tears from falling over her work, but only 
when Irma said: 

“Now, boys, to bed, you’ve studied enough,” did 
she feel free to lay it aside. 

Then Irma quite ostentatiously told the children 
to say good night, though Ferry was already leaning 
affectionately, after his way, against his aunt and 
saying that he would help make up the divan, but 
Irma who suffered terribly from jealousy and could 
ill endure these signs of love, told him it was late 
and that she would help Tante Ilde. The three 
then kissed her resoundingly, but sleepily. When 


LIESEL AND OTTO 87 

she felt the nearness of those young bodies, their 
adolescent strength held in leash by that sapping 
under-nourishment, she realized all the more that 
she was useless, her sands run. She forgot that she 
was paying for the alcove and wondered if this was 
the way things would always be, as she finally laid 
herself down on the old brown divan, on that divan 
that had for years been in the sitting room at Baden, 
and when all the beds were in use had offered a 
pleasant night’s rest to the last-come child. Now 
she was sleeping on it herself, but as an intruder, 
fitfully, unquietly, from time to time hearing Ferry 
cough and turn in his bed, and always Irma’s loud, 
empty snore. 







Ill 

ANNA AND PAULI 


I 





















Ill 


ANNA AND PAULI 
Innig, lebhaft. 

Du meine Seele, du mein Herz, 
Du meine Wonn’, O du mein Schmerz. 

Pauli Birbach especially disliked the Mariahil- 
ferstrasse, an endless street. Here and there a 
century-old peasant house caught up in the tide of the 
growing city; here and there some rococo palais in 
a side street visible from a corner; here and there 
a great department store. But mostly there were 
little shops, little businesses connected with little 
lives, the lives of the middle and lower middle 
classes that crowded its interminability. The true 
motive power of every one in that street in those 
post-war years, and in every one of the side streets, 
no matter what their condition in life, was the desire 
for food. Indescribable meannesses were practised, 
crimes even, were committed for a bit of fat, a little 
sugar or molasses. Those who weren’t actually 
confronted with starvation had that terrible hunger 
for fats, for sweets, a hunger that touched the 
91 


92 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


brain, that could arouse in the gentlest soul cruel, 
predatory thoughts. Now and then the rumor 
would get about that a certain delicatessen shop 
had cheese or salami. It would be stormed by those 
who had money to buy, and the entrance encumbered 
by those who could only see, or others more for¬ 
tunate, who could get near enough to smell. Those 
who had reason to get in were few in comparison to 
the many who remained outside. Indeed the only 
peace in Vienna was that which reigned inside cer¬ 
tain expensive provision shops. 

Pauli’s dislike of the Mariahilfer street was pro¬ 
found and temperamental. He liked things di¬ 
versified and grandiose. Mariahilfer street was 
neither. Now it was more than ever depressing in 
that drab, monotonous struggle for survival. Any 
one of the indwellers knew how near the potter’s 
field was, the hospital, the asylum. A little sag¬ 
ging of endeavor and they would find themselves in 
one or another of those undesirable places. Anna 
had stupidly, tactlessly taken that apartment during 
the war, when her husband was away, and before 
the housing problem had come to add the difficulty 
of shelter to that of nourishment. He had said to 
himself when he learned of the new address: 
“Now isn’t that just like Anna—the one street I 
hate in Vienna.” 

She had crowded their furniture, but uncosily, 
into the restricted space. There were three sofas 


ANNA AND PAULI 


93 


in the living room and various tables besides the one 
they used for their meals. No books in Anna’s 
home any more than in Liesel’s. A similar glass 
compartment above a somewhat similar desk held 
an accumulation of bric-a-brac of purely family in¬ 
terest. Two white and gilt cups bearing the words 
“dem lieben Vater,” “der lieben Mutter” that had 
been Hermine’s first gifts to her parents for their 
morning coffee; several solemn vases that on vari¬ 
ous occasions the women had presented to each 
other, and in whose narrow necks outraged flowers 
always wilted; a slab of wood with the Castle of 
Salzburg painted on it against a blue background; 
a group of carved wooden bears from Innsbruck 
and other souvenirs of the days when they travelled. 
Some gay Dresden china figures in minuet postures 
immediately struck the eye, that Pauli had given 
Anna when they were first married, now extraor¬ 
dinarily out of keeping with the paralysis of their 
conjugal l*fe. 

The sofa cushions were in dull linen, worked in 
dull colors and bore the usual mottoes: “Nur ein 
viertel Stuendchen,” “Traueme suess” and the like. 

The once too-bright pattern of the Brussels rug 
had faded into browns and greys. The various 
chairs carried on their backs and arms their ugly, 
witless, crocheted doilies. 

Even over Tante Ilde’s gay little brass-bound 
chest, containing dear but unsalable odds and ends, 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


94 

Anna had thrown a brown cloth cover worked 
sparsely in white and yellow daisies. 

There was something dead about it all and 
about the two dull women the expression of whose 
being it was. 

To Pauli, gay, sparkling, eager, passionate Pauli, 
it was as pleasant to visit his home as it would have 
been to visit the cemetery. In one corner was the 
table on which, wrapped in a scarlet cloth, was 
Pauli’s zimbalon. It was the only thing in the dwel¬ 
ling that spoke of its master. It was the bright 
flower on the grave, and too, he visited his home not 
much oftener than he would have visited Anna had 
she been lying in the Central Cemetery. 

One of those stupid, fatal marriages. Anna 
had never understood anything about it, either the 
making or the unmaking of it. But she continued 
to love him with all the force of her poor being, and 
accepted, because she had to, his now habitual 
absence. 

Pauli’s mother had been a Hungarian and in his 
bright Magyar way he had long since put the dots 
on the “ies” of the conjugal situation: “Anna? 
Dead since years. She ought to wear a bead 
wreath.” 

That sombre flame in her eyes that from time to 
time he was unpleasantly aware of was, indeed, no 
more attractive to him than the phosphorescence 
shining about something decayed. 


ANNA AND PAULI 


95 

Sometimes he felt a brief pity for Hermine, his 
daughter, so young, so unattractive, so mirthless. 
“The poor girl” he would think, and then his 
thoughts would turn to fairer, brighter maids who 
might have been called poor for quite other reasons. 
To be a woman and not have beauty, grace—more 
or less—was in Pauli Birbach’s eyes her one real 
misfortune. Women’s beauty was, indeed, the cen¬ 
tral point in his world, that artistic, pleasure-loving, 
pleasure-giving world in which he was at home 
He used to think that if he had married any one 
of Heinrich Bruckner’s daughters save Anna he 
could have managed,—but just Anna. He some¬ 
times thought too, that if he could have explained 
why he had sighed to possess Anna he could have 
explained any and all of the puzzles of the Universe. 
It held indeed all riddles within itself. 

But for the last year it had not been any one of 
Herr Bruckner’s handsome daughters. Since a 
certain day when he had gone with Corinne to 
Kaethe’s . . . since that day when the simplest yet 
mightiest thing had happened. . . . 

They had been standing at a window waiting for 
the rain to stop. They were very near as they 
looked out. Suddenly Pauli had been aware of a 
profound commotion in his being . . . something 
hot and sweet and cruel and his own. He was see¬ 
ing Corinne as he had never before seen any woman. 
She was deadly pale, her eyes were closed, her 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


9 6 

dark lashes lying heavily upon her cheeks. When 
she opened them and looked back at him the hover¬ 
ing magic, descending upon them had worked its 
purpose. 

He was done suddenly and forever with the pluck- 
able maids, perpetually ripe fruit, all seasons be¬ 
ing theirs, that abound in Vienna; inaccessible too, to 
the sentiments that he had periodically experienced 
for one or another woman who had crossed his sus¬ 
ceptible and magnetic orbit, whom he had possessed 
or not possessed, as the case might have been. It 
was different from everything else under the sun and 
was growing, growing. It was hope and image in 
his brain, greed and hurry in his body. He was 
mad for Corinne, Corinne earning unnaturally yet 
competently her daily bread in a bank when she 
should have been holding court under some oak at 
the change of the midsummer moon. Corinne plac¬ 
ing endless, neat zeroes across broad, white pages 
when she should have been plucking simples or brew¬ 
ing potions. That elfin brood that crowded her 
pale heart overpowered his being, held it captive. 
One would have said he needed something brighter, 
hotter. ... Yet, Corinne . . . out of the whole 
world. . . . But that none of them knew as yet 
save Tante Ilde in her shy, sure way. Anna, who 
never got things straight, had a deep, dull jealousy of 
Fanny, a sentiment, however, that she had been fa¬ 
miliar with since her earliest childhood, and when 


ANNA AND PAULI 


97 


indirectly she learned that Pauli had seen Fanny, 
she was miserable for days, after her chill, slow 
habit, miserable unto death almost. She suspected 
Fanny of having made that arrangement about 
Tante Ilde; Fanny, though one never saw her, was 
always everywhere it seemed to Anna. Two dull 
fires had burned in Anna’s eyes, two sombre red 
spots had darkened her cheeks, excitement never 
lighted up her face, when she learned not only that 
her aunt Ilde was to come and regularly, every Tues¬ 
day, but that Pauli himself would cast his bright 
shadow over his own dark threshold on that day. 
She and Hermine began straightway to plan as at¬ 
tractive a menu as lack of talent and materials per¬ 
mitted. . . . 

When Corinne had asked Pauli if Anna couldn’t 
take Tante Ilde once a week for her midday meal, 
he had responded warmly, not simply to give Co¬ 
rinne pleasure, but because he was made that way. 

“But of course! The poor, dear Tanterl, I’ll tell 
Anna to get the best she can, you know she’s not 
very clever at it, and I’ll try to be there myself.” 

Pauli was doubtless various kinds of a sinner, but 
his humanity was always to be counted on. It 
wasn’t because Corinne was looking obliquely at 
him, with the look that stirred him hotly, madly. .. . 

Anna and Hermine talked ceaselessly of the pos¬ 
sibilities or rather the impossibilities of the meal. 
Hermine even went into her mother’s bed two sue- 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


98 

cessive nights and stayed there late. The various 
Hungarian dishes he was so fond of presented im¬ 
mense difficulties. Those that didn’t need a lot of 
sugar, milk and eggs, needed a lot of butter, lard 
or fat of some kind. Even love did not make Anna 
inventive and people never sold her anything as 
they did to Liesel because they wanted to see her 
smile when she got it. They passed in review one by 
one those tantalizing dishes, pulling up round at a 
Paprikahuhn, chicken in paprika. It rose up and 
clucked a ghostly cluck out of happier kitchen days. 
But where to get that chicken in the flesh? It was 
no easier than getting a tropical bird of bright plum¬ 
age and stripping it. He liked sweet things too, 
Kaiserschmarn with a lot of powdered sugar on it, 
or Palatschinken, those traditional pancakes, filled 
heavily with jam. 

During the earlier years of Anna’s married life, 
when Pauli saw how things culinary were going, 
a young Hungarian servant had been sent him by 
one of his sisters. She was an excellent cook and 
had taught Anna in a way, a lot of things, but she 
had been landed, like all good cooks, in the net of 
marriage, and was succeeded in the Birbach house¬ 
hold by various maids of varying and inferior tal¬ 
ents. But Anna really didn’t know good food from 
bad, and she got careless too. Pauli was oftener 
and longer absent, and then the War came and then 
the Peace. Pauli by no means let them starve, but 


ANNA AND PAULI 


99 

he didn’t see his way to keeping those two ghosts, 
who unnaturally bore his name, supplied with the 
delicacies or, to be more exact, the relative delicacies 
of post-war Vienna, that oftener than not they 
would spoil in the cooking. 

He had his two sisters, widowed on the same day 
of the war, and their broods of little children to sup¬ 
port. It had not been so difficult to care for them 
at first for they had taken their children and gone 
back to the house of their mother near Groswardein, 
that comfortable Landhaus that they had all three 
inherited with its acres bearing wine and grain. 
But when they thought the war was over they sud¬ 
denly found themselves one dark night fleeing with 
the rest of the inhabitants before an unexpected 
army. After days they got into Budapest and when 
the panic had abated and they wanted to go back, 
they found to their consternation that though they 
were still Hungarian their lands had become Rou¬ 
manian. Some dark, transmuting evil had been 
worked. Suddenly they had no civil state there 
where they were born and no longer possessed what 
their parents had bequeathed them ... as unbe¬ 
lievable as that. . . . Pauli enabled them to eke 
out a reduced existence with their many children in 
some rooms on the outskirts of Pesth. 

The comfortable Landhaus with its pink walls, 
its green shutters, its sloping roof, the grapevine 
growing up over the door, the great plane tree 


100 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


in the garden, became as a lost paradise to be de¬ 
scribed to children at the knee,—with hints of re¬ 
covery when they were old enough to fight for their 
own. 

Though Anna suspected that Pauli supported his 
sisters and in her heart was bitter about it, she had 
no courage and less opportunity to reproach him 
with it. 

Pauli loved his sisters very much, especially his 
sister Mimi, and he had never told her the tale of 
Geza’s death brought back by his comrade. How 
they were to charge a certain hill in Galicia one 
chilly autumn dawn in the face of the enemy, waiting 
millions of them, it seemed, after the Russian way of 
lavish cannon-food. How Geza naturally a laugh¬ 
ing man had been leaden-hearted as they went up 
side by side; even the schnapps served out to the 
troops had not put heart into him. He had said, 
“I’m going up because I must, but it’s quite useless— 
I’ll never come down again.” . . . Geza loved life 
. . . and when they got up to the top immediately 
a great splinter of shell struck him in the chest and 
he looked a last reproachful look at his comrade as 
he fell against him. . . . The end of Geza who 
loved life. 

No, Pauli couldn’t bear to think of that. Some 
day he meant to tell Mimi of those cruel last mo¬ 
ments, when Geza knew, knew that his end was near. 

. . . Perhaps he never would, and then again the 


ANNA AND PAULI 


IOI 


day might come when it wouldn’t hurt Mimi so 
much. The children would never understand. And 
it would be as if Geza, heavy with premonition, had 
never charged that hill and said those last words,— 
as if he had never been at all. That was the way of 
life, but Pauli didn’t like to think of it . . . all that 
being no more ... as if you had never been; his 
bright, strong flesh rejected it. 

He was, somewhat vaguely to his wife, in business 
that brought with it frequent mention of the Travel 
Bureau in the Kaerntnerring and entailed many ab¬ 
sences. They had grown accustomed to his travels, 
and anyway the thoughts of his wife and daughter 
ran, with that of the rest of the population on what 
they were going to eat and how they were going to 
get it, rather than on the coming or going of any 
non-edible, even husband and father. So, though 
they were among the relatively well-to-do in the 
starving city, the two women talked almost entirely 
of what they had eaten or were going to eat and 
Hermine was to experience her greatest enthusiasms 
when scurrying home with a bit of fat or a can of 
jam. 


The difficulty of getting to Anna’s from the Ho- 
her Markt was occupying Frau Stacher’s thoughts 
as she lay awake in the early dawn, watching the 
day grow stronger, till she could see Haydn leading 


102 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


the young Mozart by the hand, and the gilt of the 
flat, white vase on the bracket underneath began to 
glisten faintly in the dull light coming in over the 
top of the curtains. 

The trolley that she could take at the Opernring 
was itself far off and the fares had jumped up to 
prohibitive prices. Foreigners, workmen and Jews 
alone had the wherewithal. She decided finally as 
she proceeded, soundlessly as possible, to make the 
limited toilet the alcove permitted, that she would 
walk. The hot cup of ersatz coffee with the ersatz 
sugar and the thin slice of gritty bread seemed some¬ 
how quite sufficient. She had entirely lost that wild 
hunger of the night before, so curiously the result 
of the tasty meal at Liesel’s. She made up her 
divan, put her things in order and carefully pulled 
back the curtains of the alcove. She had been made 
aware, the morning before, that Irma liked to have 
them drawn back early and tight, and certainly it 
did give a more spacious aspect to the living room, 
off which were the two little bed chambers, one oc¬ 
cupied by Irma with her youngest boy and the other 
by Ferry and Gusl. Except for the fading photo¬ 
graph, on the chest of drawers, of the long dead 
Commercial Advisor in its wooden frame of carved 
Edelweiss, got when he and his bride had gone to 
Switzerland, his widow was completely wiped out of 
that living space. She felt no more at ease there 
than if she were suspended in mid-air, or pressed 


ANNA AND PAULI 


103 

into some shadowy yet too narrow dimension,—in 
a word horribly uncomfortable. . . . 

The boys had had their cocoa, their thick slices of 
bread so carefully measured and cut, and had gone 
off to school. Heinie would get a midday meal at 
a relief station near the seat of learning, which pro¬ 
vided for one scholar out of each needy family each 
day. The three boys took turns, coming home for 
dinner on alternate days. There was a fierceness 
about Irma where food for the boys was in ques¬ 
tion. When they had licked their spoons and 
looked about at the empty plates on the table, with 
their eyes a trifle too big, and Ferry with those bright 
spots on each cheek, Irma’s jaw would set and her 
brow darken. Not long before she had discovered 
however, a way of adding to their nourishment . . . 
the “Friends” in the Singerstrasse . . . you re¬ 
ceived a ticket there and then you went to the 
Franzensplatz to get the package. But as the en¬ 
deavor of the various foreign relief societies was 
not to fully nourish any one family or quarter at the 
expense of other families and quarters, but to the 
best of their limited ability to keep as large a part 
as possible of the two and one half millions from ac¬ 
tually dying of hunger, that relief in any one case 
was only palliative. . . . 

When Tante Ilde set out on that tramp to Anna’s 
dressed again in her best things,—Pauli always no¬ 
ticed what women wore, even old women,—she left 


104 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


Irma planning the midday meal. Irma in an 
extraordinarily fortunate way had got hold of some 
chicken legs,—it would never happen again she was 
sure, being inclined to pessimism. She had scraped 
and washed them, and was going to cook them with 
the rice. Furthermore into the rice she was going 
to put a little of the evaporated milk that had come 
in the thrice blessed package from the Franzens- 
platz, it would be nearly equal to meat. Enough 
for three plates full, two large ones for Gusl and 
for little Heinie and a smaller one for herself. A 
box of zwieback had come in the package too, and 
a piece for each would be dipped into some of the 
milk. It was a good day and she warmly returned 
Tante Ilde’s farewell and told her she hoped Anna 
would have something fit to eat. She had a feeling 
that she couldn’t get rid of, that some day Tante 
Ilde would have a cold or something and wouldn’t be 
able to get out. However sufficient unto the day, 
and that morning she was almost affectionate. 

When Frau Stacher got down into the street a 
great puff of wind caught her and slapped her dress 
about her legs, but she disentangled herself and 
stepped, not unbriskly, into the Rotenturm Street. 
The day was cold and overcast, but the rain had not 
yet begun to fall. She passed St. Stephen’s, cross¬ 
ing herself as she did so and got into the Kaerntner 
Street. In spite of the chill dampness and the 
great slaps of wind doing full honor to the reputa- 


ANNA AND PAULI 


105 

tion of the windiest of cities, (the Windobona of 
the Romans, that name on which generations of 
windswept inhabitants have made their jokes and 
puns), she felt more at home than in the alcove. 
After all the pavement was free to everybody, just as 
much hers, when you came down to it, as anybody’s. 
Quite unlike the alcove which in some pervasive, 
though not at all indefinite way, seemed not to be 
hers. She tried to comfort herself with the thought 
that she was paying for it, just as Irma decently 
tried to remember that fact. But Irma clearly 
wanted to be alone with her children. Irma’s 
nerves, for all her seeming bodily health, were cer¬ 
tainly in a bad way. . . . 

Passing down the Kaerntner Street Frau Stacher 
stood a moment looking in at Zwieback’s windows, 
such warm stuffs in such bright colors were dis¬ 
played, gay knitted Jerseys and scarves,—a purple 
one that would have lain consolingly against her 
pale thinness. There were silk stockings too, berib- 
boned underwear and in another window incredible 
evening dresses. Who on earth wore evening 
dresses—now? She remembered how she had got 
her grey silk dress there for Kaethe’s wedding. In 
the old days she had shopped just like anybody else, 
buying things she didn’t need and would soon for¬ 
get she had. . . . 

Then suddenly she found that her heart was beat¬ 
ing thickly. She was passing Fanny’s corner, tim- 


106 VIENNESE MEDLEY 

idly looking away from it, magnetically drawn to it; 
the pavement seemed somehow alive under her 
feet. . . . She longed yet feared to meet Fanny; 
Fanny wrapped to her sea-blue eyes in her scented 
furs, Fanny young and beautiful, Fanny who knew 
neither cold nor hunger, nor about being unwanted. 
Fanny’s desirability, though it brought no images 
with it, sent the blood pounding up darkly to her 
face. . . . 

But she was white again as she passed the Hotel 
Erzherzog Johann, remembering with a sudden stab 
how she had always driven there in a drosky when 
she came to Vienna from Baden for a day’s shop¬ 
ping, and how pleasant that great, laughing, singing 
city had seemed. Now the iridescence had gone out 
of it. It was drab where once it had gleamed with 
a thousand vivid tints; beggarly where it had dis¬ 
pensed with a lavish unconcern. 

She had been in the habit of taking her dinner at 
the Erzherzog Johann’s, the proprietor had been a 
friend of her husband’s. The old head waiter 
would always greet her warmly as a friend of the 
house he had served so long, and he would re¬ 
commend a quarter of a roast chicken, the wing and 
breast, of course, and tell her how the noodles had 
been made fresh in the hotel that very morning, and 
then wind up by singing the merits of a Linzer or 
Sacher tart. 

She’d leave her bundles there and come back 


ANNA AND PAULI 


107 


at four o’clock for her coffee with whipped cream, 
and he’d cut her a slice of the fresh gugelhupf. 
Such happy days. She hadn’t really had the slight¬ 
est idea how happy they were; she thought how she 
had often worried about the stupidest things. She 
became conscious of an increasing sadness as she 
passed on down the street, realizing miserably how 
little human beings make of their actual blessings, 
whatever they may be, and she found herself sending 
up a prayer to be trusted with a little happiness,— 
just once more. She thought how never, never 
again, should they miraculously be hers, would she 
take as rightful dues her three meals a day, her 
comfortable bed, her clothes befitting the seasons, 
but that always, up from her heart would well 
thanks to the mysterious Giver or Withholder of 
these things. 

She felt a little faint as she hurried past the 
delicatessen shop on the corner. There wasn’t 
much in the windows; food wasn’t kept in windows 
in those days, but inside there would doubtless be a 
maddening smell of cheese and sausage. 

A one-legged young man, his leg gone to the 
thigh, in a tattered combination of military and civil 
coverings, stood always on that corner selling his 
miserable shoe laces. . . . 

But there was another note, quite another, that 
rang lustily out from the Kaerntner Street, for there 
the new feudal lords of Vienna, (which inevitably 


io8 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


has lords of some kind), walked with ringing tread 
in the triumph of their plenty. That mushroom ar¬ 
istocracy come out of Israel and the war had pushed 
into some shadowy, scrawny underbrush of life that 
once great, powerful “First Society.” 

As Frau Stacher got near the Bristol the flooding 
crowd seemed almost entirely made up of large, 
showily-dressed women and bright, alert, stout men, 
whose prosperity was immediate and inescapable. 
Before it her seventy years of gentility were swept 
up, a bit of dust, into her otherwise bare corner. 
What had she to do with that new princedom arisen 
from the ruins of the war, or it with her? Their 
ways, their gestures, their looks were alien, inimical 
to those of the Princes, Counts and Barons of that 
old world; that old world the pride and joy even of 
those not of it. What the new Lords did and how 
they lived was a mystery to Frau Stacher that she 
had no desire to solve. Her fear increased. She 
felt but a bit of pallid wreckage in the flooding of 
that active, highly-colored element. It beat against 
her suffocatingly, frighteningly, that new blood flow¬ 
ing vehemently in Vienna’s veins, its only blood in¬ 
deed. In the familiar street she was both stranger 
and outcast daughter. She couldn’t even look at the 
Bristol, whither so many of those new lords seemed 
bent, there where people still crumbled their bread 
at dinner instead of eating it. . . . It was Fanny’s 
world. Perhaps even now Fanny would be on her 


ANNA AND PAULI 


109 

way there with her light, straight, flying step, like 
a bird in the air. They all knew that walk of 
Fanny’s. . . . 

That first comfortable feeling of owning the pave¬ 
ment, of independence had gone. She was increas¬ 
ingly confused by the myriad signs and symbols of 
money of which she had none. Everywhere 
“Cambio-Valute,” “Devisen” in gilt letters, and 
banknotes laid out in patterns in the windows . . . 
exchange bureaux, in which unholy rites were per¬ 
formed by those chosen men standing fatly, firmly 
on gold, while the rest of Vienna tottered and fell 
on paper. She was exhausted too, by the buffeting 
of the everlasting wind, and she suddenly and reck¬ 
lessly decided to take the three hundred crowns re¬ 
maining in her purse and get on the trolley. There 
was one at the very corner that, mercifully, would 
take her up the interminability of the Mariahilfcr 
Street. After lunch the wind would perhaps have 
fallen and she could walk back. She tried not to 
think how far it would be. She was too spent for 
thought by her impact with that new world, that 
world that suddenly had too much, trampling to 
death the world that almost as suddenly had too 
little or nothing. Outcast indeed. 

The crowd was thickly waiting at the stopping 
place. In the rush for seats as the trolley slowed 
down, she was pushed frighteningly but fortunately 
along and up the high step and in a second found 


no 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


herself sitting, breathless and hidden between a 
man with a large sack of something that had, to the 
eager eyes of the other occupants, the interesting 
appearance of flour, and a pale young woman with a 
spindle-legged, big-eyed child of four or five in her 
arms. In her sympathy with the young mother and 
the doomed child and her relief at being seated Frau 
Stacher forgot her hunger and her fatigue and de¬ 
livered herself up to the delightful sensation of be¬ 
ing borne clangingly, powerfully along. She de¬ 
scended quite lightly at the crowded stopping place, 
though she was jostled and jammed again by the 
crowd fighting to get in. Crossing over she turned 
into a grey little street and entering a sombre door¬ 
way went up to the apartment where Anna was 
awaiting her husband and her aunt. 

There was an air of expectancy about the room 
as Frau Stacher entered that somewhat relieved its 
terrible dullness. On the table was a fresh, fine 
linen cloth, from the days of comfort, and four 
places were set; a bottle of pale Tokay, like a streak 
of sunlight caught the eye. There was something 
sadly festive about it. 

“I thought it was Pauli when I heard you outside 
in the hall,” were Anna’s words as she opened the 
door. But her aunt accepted the vicarious 
greeting without indeed noticing it. They all knew 
about Anna. That was the way she was. 

Her heavy dark hair that Tante Ilde had once 


ANNA AND PAULI 


111 


so faithfully brushed back into beauty was braided 
in a thick braid and twisted twice around her head; 
but when you had said that about Anna, that was all 
there was to be remarked. The rest was long, 
faded, shadowy. From those once noticeably 
broad, fine shoulders, now simply gaunt, her thin 
breast fell away into her flat waist above her bony 
hips. There was not one single thing about Anna 
Birbach to cause anyone to suspect that she belonged 
to a smiling, art-loving, easy-going, fatalistic race, 
with something of the West and much of the East 
in its makeup. Indeed the broad highway that 
leads east from the city is the straight road to the 
Orient, is already the Orient. Something only 
vaguely diagnosable, but highly-colored, slips in 
through that Eastern Gate to tint more deeply the 
Viennese population, a happy enough mixture when 
only a tenth of them, not nine-tenths, are starving. 
Hunger there has always been in Vienna. Even in 
the days of plenty there were thousands who, palely 
shadowing the street corners had nothing,—the 
bare, spectral want of the East without its sun and 
leisure. . . . 

Hermine was in the kitchen. She had no more 
knack at cooking than her mother, but the War 
had caught her in her earliest youth and the Peace 
had taught her a few lessons of culinary survival,— 
though her omelettes would always be hard and her 
pancakes tough. 


112 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


The smell of the onions in the potato soup had 
its own peculiar charm, however. Tante Ilde found 
that she was very hungry and she was quite ashamed 
of certain uncontrollable, rolling sounds that pro¬ 
ceeded from the empty region beneath her belt. 

Anna began immediately to tell her that they 
had finally decided on a goulash,—it was safer and 
simpler to make than anything else. Both Hermine 
and her mother had an uneasy knowledge that Pauli 
was critical in regard to food, though he wouldn’t 
say a word if a dish hadn’t turned out right; only 
he wouldn’t be seen again for a couple of months. 
Instinctively desiring to flatter him they had kept as 
far as possible along Hungarian lines; the potato 
soup had been a second choice, for Hermine’s im¬ 
agination had played at first opaquely about a 
Halaszle, a fish soup that he loved, but she had no 
fish and she didn’t know how to make it, so she 
slumped back on the potato soup as offering least 
resistance. She was hoping for great things from 
the Palatschinken, however, she had the batter pre¬ 
pared for cooking at the physiological moment and 
the can of gluey apricot jam (ersatz) was already 
open. Both women were obviously quite excited. 
Anna had those dull, maroon spots on her cheeks; 
Hermine was paler than usual and kept running into 
the kitchen and coming back and changing some¬ 
thing on the table. It was a quarter of an hour 
later when they heard the somewhat rusty sound of 


ANNA AND PAULI 


ii3 

the master’s key in the door. He still kept that 
key hanging on his chain, though for all the use he 
made of it the bell would have sufficed. “The key 
of the cemetery” he called it to himself and was 
thankful as he went in that he would find Tante Ilde 
there among the graves. 

He was a very handsome man of forty in a full- 
colored, ample way, inclining slightly to embon¬ 
point. His brown eyes were forever flashing and 
going out as he lifted or let fall his pale, heavy lids. 
A rosy shade lay upon his cheeks contrasting pleas¬ 
antly with the clear olive of his skin. A dark 
moustache did not conceal his white teeth when he 
laughed, which was often, and they gave an ad¬ 
ditional accent to the whole, the color scheme be¬ 
coming even blinding when he wore, as on that day, 
one of his favorite red neckties. 

Immediately he filled the grey room, or perhaps 
it dissolved about him. . . . Life, life. He 
brought the life of his pleasant, easy-going, musical 
Viennese father; the life of his impetuous, fiery, 
musical Hungarian mother, that strong, active el¬ 
ement which the Magyars infuse so happily into the 
more “gemuetlich” qualities of the Austrians. 
Whenever anything happened in Vienna for good or 
evil in the old days, it was generally traceable to the 
more dynamic qualities of the Hungarians,—and 
doubtless will be so again. 

There was no hint of war or post-war days on 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


114 

Pauli’s face, rather some astounding avoidance of 
their ills, some unimpaired eagerness for life. His 
wife and daughter were unacquainted with a pale 
shadow that of late often dimmed it. 

The women, except Tante Ilde, were blotted out. 
She felt the exhilaration, the immediate electriza¬ 
tion of the air and sat up quite straight, her elbows 
elegantly pressed against her waist and began to 
smile her fine, sweet smile. Her presence lay about 
Pauli as a wreathing mist about a mountain on a 
sunny day. Again he was thankful to find her there. 

Dutifully he gave Anna a robust but empty kiss 
on both cheeks, with a “Well, how goes it?” and 
the same to Hermine, standing close by her mother. 
He thought fleetingly for the thousandth time that 
it was a calamity for women to be ugly. 

Then he turned the full blaze of his countenance 
on Tante Ilde: 

“Ach, the dear, lovely Auntie,” he cried, “she 
must also have a Busserl,” and he proceeded to kiss 
each pale cheek and even to press her against his 
thick, warm breast. 

“Not lovely, only loving,” she returned, but she 
smiled, suddenly quite happy and Pauli felt his 
words had not been in vain. He liked to have 
happy faces about him and laughter and jokes, and 
if it were women who were being made happy all 
the better. 

“I smell something good,” he next said amiably 


ANNA AND PAULI 


115 

sniffing in the air, “and I’m quite ready. In the 
Cafes,” he continued, “it’s 3,000 crowns for a piece 
of bread, 10,000 for a glass of beer and 5,000 for a 
smell of roast pork from the next table!” Again 
he sniffed gayly. Even when he barked his shins 
against a hard, low bench that stood unnaturally 
near the dining table, he gave no sign of the im¬ 
patience that always possessed him when with Anna. 
But in spite of his remarks about his hunger, he took 
very little of the lukewarm soup which Hermine had 
poured out too soon. And when she dragged her 
sleeve in the goulash as she put it on the table, he 
indulgently recounted a joke he had seen in the 
Meggendorfer Blatter . How a certain woman 
going into a cheesemonger’s had skilfully passed her 
long sleeve through a dish of white cheese, in that 
way removing an appreciable quantity, and how the 
cheesemonger in a rage made her come back to pay 
for it, threatening to have her up for theft. 

Sallow Hermine was greatly in awe of her highly- 
colored father, who expected from her, she uncom¬ 
fortably felt, something that she could not offer, but 
now she was giggling girlishly, and even Anna’s face 
seemed less formless. 

Yes, Pauli was doing his best to make it pleasant 
for the quite accidental beings who bore his name. 
Dispensing smiles that, after all, were so rightly, 
though so strangely, theirs. Life was truly mys¬ 
terious; they were human beings too, come out of 


ii 6 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


nothing, hurrying as fast as Time could take them, 
to the same end. It produced undeniably at mo¬ 
ments a feeling of comradeship,—though Pauli in¬ 
tended to avoid Anna in the other world. . . . 

Tante Ilde was indeed making things easier, 
suaver; Tante Ilde was really an alabaster box of 
precious ointment, broken anew each time she went 
into one of those homes not hers, diffusing sweet 
odors about her. They would mostly, (perhaps not 
Pauli), have thought: “It’s poor old Tante Ilde 
and we’ve got to do something for her,” not dream¬ 
ing that all the time it was she who was doing some¬ 
thing priceless for them. 

Now he was in a fever of longing to hear a be¬ 
loved name. But she told them first about Liesel 
and Otto, everything she could without making 
Anna jealous; not, of course, about the sausage. 
Meat twice a day would have scandalized Anna, 
and anyway Tante Ilde would never have been 
guilty of the indelicacy of speaking about that sau¬ 
sage, wrapped up and put away too. The fresh 
noodles in fresh butter were all that Anna and 
Hermine could really stand; they would talk about 
them for days; but she described in detail the pack¬ 
age from the “Friends” at which Anna and Hermine 
pricked up their big ears and cried: “You don’t 
say!” and Hermine ran and got an inch-long pencil 
and a piece of newspaper and wrote the address on 
the margin. Then she and her mother nodded their 


ANNA AND PAULI 


heads significantly at each other. They were both 
thinking that Irma should have let them know im¬ 
mediately, and that some afternoon late, when it was 
dark and they wouldn’t be seen, they’d go for one of 
those packages. . . . 

As Tante Ilde was talking Pauli noticed the white 
lace about her neck and how genteel she contrived to 
look in spite of age and disaster. Then his eyes 
travelled to his daughter, seeing her really for the 
first time that day. Hermine had on a chocohte- 
colored dress with trimmings of an unpleasant blue. 
Pauli turned his eyes again to Tante Ilde’s cameo 
face, from which the broad eyes seemed to look out 
more and more bluely as the dinner went on. Pleas¬ 
ure, even a little, was apt to put the color back into 
her eyes. Then he looked again at his daughter. 
He was thinking that the devil could take him if he 
knew what color would be becoming to his only child. 
Something, anything to emphasize her, to put her on 
the chart, so he followed out his natural taste as he 
said: 

“I must give you a new dress, Hermine, pink or 
red or a good bright blue?” 

Hermine was delighted at this mark of paternal 
affection and Anna astonished. When a long time 
after he saw the hard and vapid blue she chose he 
was finally and forever discouraged. No, Hermine 
had no flair, she always went wrong on colors, like 
Anna. His wife and daughter were beyond Pauli. 


118 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


Just those two women out of all Vienna he could 
rightfully go home to; Hermine was even named for 
his mother. “Na, dos ist kein Leben,” it’s no life, 
he often thought in his broadest, most expressive 
Viennese. Pauli who could speak perfectly half a 
dozen languages, always chose that in which to 
clothe satisfactorily certain unsatisfactory thoughts. 

At last when Hermine was out in the kitchen 
smearing up with her finger the bit of jam that re¬ 
mained on the platter from the Palatschinken, Tante 
Ilde spoke the name Pauli had come to hear . . . 
Corinne . . . and stupid Anna didn’t care. It was 
the mention of Fanny that she could not have borne. 
Anna never caught the truth about anything. 

“I’m going to have dinner with Corinne on Fri¬ 
day,” Tante Ilde said finally, a soft radiance spread¬ 
ing over her face, and turned her eyes, suddenly a 
lovely azure, full upon him. “Corinne is an angel.” 

Perhaps Tante Ilde shouldn’t have said that right 
there before Anna, in Anna’s own house, but Anna 
created an unendurable vacuum about herself, it 
made people want to throw something, anything into 
it to fill the horrible void. 

“She thinks you are one,” answered Pauli with a 
sudden deep breath, and there was a note in his 
voice that his wife, or at least his daughter, standing 
at the kitchen door, should have noticed. 

Then his eye wandered to the only bit of color in 
the room,—the scarlet cloth covering his zimbalon. 


ANNA AND PAULI 


119 

“Shall I make a bit of music, Tante Ilde?” he sud¬ 
denly cried with an indecipherable gesture, and laid 
his cigarette down on his plate, where wastefully in 
Anna’s eyes, it smoked its life away. He pushed his 
chair back from the table and getting up uncovered 
the instrument without another word. He was sud¬ 
denly one vast flame of love for Corinne. He knew 
the feeling well,—consuming, he was really beside 
himself ... in an instant . . . like that. He be¬ 
gan to play a wild Czardas of his mother’s land. 
The light grew brighter in his eyes, the color deep¬ 
ened in his face, but it was of a moonbeam woman, 
shadow-thin, that he was thinking. 

The music beat mercilessly upon the three lis¬ 
teners, with its cruel, splendid life-throb, with its 
piercing intimation that even a thousand years of 
love would be all too short for the longing heart. 
From time to time he emitted a wild cry and his 
nostrils would dilate; his body swayed rythmically 
above the instrument. He was indeed “thirsty in 
the night and unslaked in the day.”. . . 

Anna remembered the short love-madness Pauli 
had once wrapped her in and pressed her hand 
against her flat breast. 

Tante Ilde thought, too, of things forever 
gone,—not of love, that was too far off, but of her 
lost dignity and use, of all that would not, could not 
be again; she had no time to wait upon events. 

Hermine was possessed by vague, youthful ex- 


120 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


pcctations of what life could so easily bring her, out 
of its whole long length, a life wherein someone 
would surely love her,—for want of another the thin 
young man she sometimes met on the stairs, who 
gave violin lessons to keep a passionate soul in a 
delicate body. Perhaps, sensitive, artistic, he would 
indeed be goaded on by that lurking, tricking spirit 
of the will-to-live to take Hermine, dull Hermine 
for wife, wrapping her for the brief moment nec¬ 
essary for the act in his own passion which would so 
perfectly conceal her essential poverty. . . . 

Suddenly Pauli stopped, the blood had gone from 
his face, leaving him very pale, but his eyes were 
full of a dark fire and in his bones was a grinding 
pain. He was in a mad hurry to be gone from that 
house of ghosts where he couldn’t hold his being 
together. 

“I’m rushed this afternoon, heaps of things to 
attend to,” he cried as he lay down his batons and 
threw the scarlet cloth over the zimbalon. To his 
goodbye to Tante Ilde he added the reminder loudly, 
distinctly: 

“It’s understood, Tante Ilde, you’re coming 
every Tuesday?” Then suddenly he was gone 
leaving the room dim and chill. 

Anna went over to the window and stood by it, 
though she couldn’t see into the street. Hermine 
almost immediately began to clear off the table. 

But Tante Ilde sat quite still. She was thinking, 


ANNA AND PAULI 


I'll 


“poor Anna, poor Anna.” There was something 
very tender in her leave-taking, something that Anna 
gratefully, dumbly accepted without knowing what 
it was that was offered her, and then Tante Ilde 
slipped away to walk those several miles back to the 
Hoher Markt. 

She had vaguely, diffidently hoped that she might 
go away when Pauli did, be carried along on his 
momentum. But he had gone so suddenly, there 
hadn’t been time for any little arrangement or sug¬ 
gestion. 

It was beginning to rain. The wind blew flat, 
cold drops against her face. She stood a moment 
looking at the trolleys clanging up and down the 
Mariahilfer Street. Why hadn’t she walked in the 
morning? 




IV 

HERMANN AND MI2ZI 











IV 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 

Staccato 

Hin ist hin! Ver- 
loren ist verloren. 

When Doctor Hermann Bruckner was suddenly 
called from the security of his civil practice to take 
charge of a field hospital, so great was the joy of 
his secret heart that even his wife became aware of 
it, and in her rustiest and most contentious tone 
asked him what on earth he was so pleased about, 
he was going out to the “oily” front where he was 
certain to be either killed or mutilated, and walking 
as if on air at the idea of getting there ! 

Skilful in diagnosis, resourceful in treatment, 
compassionate concerning the imponderable ail¬ 
ments of his patients as well as those visible, he had, 
it is true, bestowed a brief anxiety on certain of them 
left to the care of the diminishing number of pro¬ 
portionately overworked physicians in Vienna; 
but for himself. . . . Home where his heart was 
not, where Mizzi nagged and scolded, was icily 
disdainful or loudly reproachful, had long been a 
125 


126 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


place in which he was desperately uncomfortable. 

The day he left for the front his aunt Ilde had 
come in from Baden to say goodbye to this much- 
loved, and as she knew, much-tried nephew. Look¬ 
ing out of the window she had seen him settle back 
into his seat in the motor, laughing in a gay, new 
way with the colleagues beside him as he opened his 
cigarette case. 

Hermann had indeed, been delivered by the war 
from something from which he had thought never 
to escape. For years, almost his only happy hours 
had been spent in his office, or hurrying about on 
his sick calls. He had a particular and personal re¬ 
gard for each patient, and the professional affection 
they awakened in him had a magnetic, commu¬ 
nicable warmth, even the uninteresting old women, 
the chronic cases, received impartially, glowingly 
their share. His bedside manners were truly con¬ 
soling and his warm handclasp, his reassuring pat on 
the shoulder made a visit to his office something to 
look forward to. In fact just seeing Doctor Bruck¬ 
ner made his patients feel that with his help they 
were not in any immediate danger of leaving this 
vale of tears for a world which, though they had al¬ 
ways been assured was a better one, they had a 
singular distaste to entering. And then his gentle 
way with suffering children. Doctor Hermann 
Bruckner, specialist for women and children, was 
born to do just what he was doing. 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


127 


But when he got home that flowing, busy life 
of his would suddenly stop, turn back chokingly 
upon itself, obstructing his every thought and feel¬ 
ing; for though Mizzi was unspeakably bored by 
him, she couldn’t let him alone. The very sight of 
his pleasant face, the easy way he had of letting his 
six feet settle into an armchair, the slow smoking of 
his Trabuco, in some extraordinary, always unex¬ 
pected way, would give rise to reproaches; never a 
moment when he could sit at ease after a hard day’s 
work and talk about pleasant things, little, unimpor¬ 
tant things. He never could tell just what would 
unbind Mizzi’s tongue or uncork her temper. He 
made an easy living and they could have had many 
pleasures, but Mizzi was always wanting the one 
thing that the hour had not brought. It was con¬ 
sidered by the family that Hermann had a hard time 
of it, that it was unfortunate that Mizzi was as she 
was, and Hermann, for reasons in the beginning not 
at all related to his own being, was now generally 
called by his relations “poor Manny.” 

They didn’t realize any of them, that Mizzi was 
a woman of great natural energy which had no out¬ 
let, and that that was one of the reasons why the 
small supply of the milk of human kindness with 
which her Maker had provided her, had early 
soured. She got quite stout, but in her smart Aus¬ 
trian way, and each year became more easily an¬ 
noyed and controlled her irritation less. Even the 


128 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


war which opened out activities to so many women 
had helped Mizzi not at all. She hated misery, 
disorder in any form and the sight of blood made 
her sick. She was inexpressibly bored by the whole 
thing and always spoke of it as “dumm.” 

When the War claimed Doctor Bruckner he 
was a very tall, broad-shouldered, deep-chested 
man. His mobile, smiling face was ennobled by 
his prominent, but finely-formed nose and his 
very black beard and moustache gave his whole 
person a last significant accent. When the War had 
no further use for him and passed him into the still 
more pitiless arms of the Peace, he was broken, dis¬ 
abled, derelict, meaningless even. He reminded 
himself of a train wreck he had seen near Lodz in 
the beginning, the telescoped cars, the messy, shape- ^ 
less debris. . . . That last month at Gorizia a 
bomb had fallen into his field-hospital. It had 
solved effectually the problems of his wounded, but 
it had increased his own. His right arm which had 
been shattered and hurriedly attended to, now hung 
nerveless in his sleeve. Mizzi’s heart and tem¬ 
per had been briefly softened at the sight of his 
misfortunes; they were so evidently complete. His 
helplessness, however, soon induced a new note in 
her voice; one of condescension and later of hard, 
unveiled impatience. 

Finally neurasthenia, on the track of so many, 
claimed him for its own. He developed a bad case 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


129 


of agoraphobia—could scarcely ever go through open 
spaces without a discomfort that amounted at times 
to agony, and Vienna seemed full of wide, open 
places. He would creep along walls, close to houses 
and doors, but when it came to crossing the street, 
unless, indeed, it were full of vehicles his eyes would 
sink and darken, his nostrils get blue and pinched. 
It was but one of various things,—that intolerably 
stupid going back and touching objects a second even 
a third time on his bad days, that continual putting 
on and taking off his coat when he was dressing, 
sometimes he was hours getting into his clothes, and 
other equally asinine matters. He still went to his 
office, across the hall,—but a one-armed, neuras¬ 
thenic doctor! Half the patients who came needed 
something done that could only be done with two 
hands. His clientele dwindled till mostly the poor 
alone came. To them he was an angel of mercy. 
But they made another complication. Mizzie hated 
the poor in any form, even the new poor, who had 
once been rich and whom she had envied in the old 
days, and when the quite thin pity engendered by his 
futile return had evaporated, she was constantly re¬ 
proaching him for having a clientele to whom he 
couldn’t or wouldn’t send bills. Hermann’s life 
became a new kind of hell from which there seemed 
to be no more escape than from the final place of 
punishment. But for all Mizzi’s unpleasant con¬ 
jugal traits she was, as we have indicated, a woman 


130 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


of ability. She stepped out, on his return, when her 
practical sense showed her that the family fortunes 
in Hermann’s hand would inevitably go from bad 
to worse, to retrieve them; and she did. 

She boldly opened a lingerie shop, and with her 
good taste, her industry, her heartlessness and her 
voice soft as honey to customers, she soon began to 
do quite well. Fanny had advanced the necessary 
loan and sent her the first customers who brought 
others in their train. She developed an unsuspected 
talent for selling. Naturally impatient she was ac¬ 
commodating to the last degree in her shop. She 
took back things that had been paid for and returned 
the money with a smile. She exchanged things, she 
adjusted things. She could always be counted on 
to have extra sizes for the dark, stout, often bearded 
ladies who patronized her in increasing numbers. 
They generally had the most elemental of under¬ 
wear, thick, machine-made garments, with machine- 
made lace and terrible pink bows; some had none 
at all. 

Mizzi initiated them into the pleasant mysteries 
of transparent “dessous,” real lace-trimmed and be- 
ribboned in delicate shades. And they had money. 
“Jesus, Marie, Joseph!” Mizzi would often exclaim, 
“what money! Great wads of it!” 

Mizzi had a way of loosening their thick, high 
corsets and pulling them down, thereby dropping 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 131 

those shelves of flesh from under their chins, and 
with her cunningly-made brassieres, those famous 
“Bustenhalter” that reduced the mountains of fat, 
or at least distributed them towards the back where 
the owners themselves couldn’t see them, she was 
especially successful. “Taktvoll kaschieren,” tact¬ 
fully conceal, was what she modestly claimed to do 
with superfluous fat. Being inclined to embonpoint 
herself, fostered by her love of the truly tempting 
sweet dishes of her native land, yet having that 
smart, pleasing figure, she could say confidently to 
the stoutest: 

“I’m a good deal thicker than you are, and look 
at me!” 

They looked at Mizzi in her impeccable loose 
black dress over her snugly-worn corset and were 
both delighted and convinced. Mizzi’s business 
was inevitably destined to go from good to still 
better, just as Hermann’s was dwindling to those 
so begrudged office hours for the very poor, now his 
only treasure. . . . His aunt Ilde, thought se¬ 
cretly that Hermann must be greatly loved by his 
Creator to have been found worthy of so many mis¬ 
fortunes. . . . He only occasionally took money 
for his services and except for a few crowns spent in 
a certain cafe sitting before his beer or his coffee, 
reading the newspaper, talking to a chance ac¬ 
quaintance, or oftener just thinking, thinking, he 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


134 

turned what little he did make back again, a pitiful 
drop, into the river of black and fatal misery that 
flowed through his office. 

Mizzi had something quite ruthless about her. 
Openly and cordially disliking the poor in general 
and poor relatives in particular, the last thing she 
would have thought of was having one of these 
latter come to her regularly for a meal. But when 
Fanny sent old Maria to ask if she could have Tante 
Ilde for dinner on Wednesday, or to choose some 
other day if that wasn’t convenient, though she had 
thought it a monstrous nuisance, that day being no 
more convenient than any other of the days of the 
week, she had said “Yes” in a voice gone quite white 
from lack of enthusiasm. But, Fanny,—she 
couldn’t afford to offend Fanny. . . . 

The establishment once known as “Hermann’s” 
was now known as “Mizzi’s.” She had suggested 
his giving up his office and renting out the rooms to 
Americans who would pay in dollars. They could 
make a “heathen money” that way. But so strange, 
so terrifying was the look that had come into his face 
that Mizzi for once had quailed before it. She 
hadn’t felt safe and anyway Fanny probably 
wouldn’t have stood for it. 

Her dream was to have a smart shop at Carlsbad. 
She had awakened to a brief political interest when 
she found that almost overnight the Czechs had be¬ 
come, unaccountably, the darlings of those against 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


133 

whom they had so recently fought, and later she dis¬ 
covered that Carlsbad was filled with victorious 
foreigners who turned their gold joyfully into 
Czechish crowns and she was forever comparing 
the rising Czech currency with the descending Aus¬ 
trian, and was visibly impatient at the senseless fact 
that the war had left her, a perfectly good Czecho¬ 
slovak, high and dry in Vienna as the wife of a 
crippled Austrian. There wasn’t any sense in any¬ 
thing, and Mizzi vented mercilessly her dissatisfac¬ 
tion on Hermann. 

She was always thinking to herself and often pro¬ 
claiming openly that Hermann was “dumm, but 
dumm,” as little of a “Nutznieser” as anyone ever 
had the bad luck to be married to. With even the 
slightest sense of values, he ought to have got some¬ 
thing out of the war. Privately Mizzi adored 
profiteers. But Hermann wasn’t made that way. 

In the end, he got tired of hearing what his 
father-in-law would have done in this, that or the 
other case. That canny Czech, Ottokar Maschka, 
had, unfortunately for Mizzi, died just as he was 
about to gather in the fruits of his labors, and when 
Mizzi married the promising young Viennese doc¬ 
tor the only visible goods she brought with her was 
the furniture with which they furnished their home; 
large, solid, comfortable pieces of mahogany and 
maple, and a lot of linen. But all that Mizzi had 
long since changed. Mizzi was a forward looker 


134 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


and liked to keep up with, when she couldn’t run 
ahead of, the styles. She had a flair about nov¬ 
elties that was to stand her in good stead. 

Hermann had ineffectually protested when she got 
rid, bit by bit, of the furnishings of the parental 
house. The only good thing about it all was that 
it kept her busy. But when he found himself sleep¬ 
ing in a narrow grey bed with conventionalized lotus 
flowers in low relief, one at the head and one at the 
foot, he felt himself completely and forever a 
stranger in that house. Then, too, the new chairs 
were extraordinarily uncomfortable, the tables 
small, while the pale mauve upholstery gave him a 
continual sense of being in a warehouse glancing 
over things he had no intention of buying. . . . 

The small shop in the Plankengasse, with the 
tiniest but smartest of show windows, was near 
enough the thoroughfares to be accessible and not 
as expensive as the Graben, the Karntnerstrasse or 
the Kohlmarkt. Little by little Mizzi was wrig¬ 
gling her way into that world of the new dispensa¬ 
tion, peopled by the acquisitive wives, daughters, 
and “friends” of profiteers,—that full, loud, clank¬ 
ing, overfed world, that world of people mad to 
possess at last what “the others” had so long pos¬ 
sessed. Theirs was the world of plenty. The 
promised land indeed. She was happier than she 
had ever been before. Her activities had full 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


i 35 

scope. She had no heart to bleed over the miseries 
of the starving city and she felt herself getting a 
really firm foothold in that “Schieber” world of 
every tradesman’s desire. That “First Society” in 
whose uprisings and outgoings she had once de¬ 
lighted, in the reflection of whose splendors she, with 
the rest of the worthy burghers of Vienna, had once 
proudly shone, was gone, its glory the bare shadow 
of a shade. For thin, ruined countesses, for 
economical princesses Mizzi had no use, only in as 
much as she could say to the wife of one of the new 
lords of creation: 

“That’s the very dressing gown the poor Countess 
Tollenberg was so enchanted with, but not a kreut- 
zer to bless herself with, only such taste! It made 
me sad not to let her have it, but now I’m consoled, 
for you, dear, gracious lady, it’s just the thing.” 
And the “dear, gracious lady” would fall for it with 
a golden crash. 

Yes, Mizzi was doing well and intended to do 
better. When she wasn’t selling, she was buying, 
like others in Vienna, who had little or much cash 
in their pockets, trying to imprison the vanishing 
value of money into objects that would remain 
visible, buying anything in fact that wouldn’t melt 
before their eyes. They called all this “Sach- 
werthe,” real value. For the antics of money were 
extraordinary, no one realized that better than 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


136 

Mizzi. No matter how carefully you guarded it, 
the next day it was less, was gone. You couldn’t 
store it up any more than you could daylight. 

As Tante Ilde that Wednesday noon was about 
to cross the Revolutionsplatz, once the Mozart- 
platz, overlooked by the Jockey Club, the Archduke 
Friedrich’s Palace, the Opera and Sacher’s Hotel, 
(the last two alone continuing to fulfill their ancient 
uses) she caught sight of a tall, familiar form 
hesitating by a lamp post. It was her nephew 
Hermann, evidently about to cross the street. He 
stood so long by the post that she easily caught up 
with him. 

“Manny!” she cried and touched him on the arm, 
but he turned towards her a face so strange that she 
was suddenly very frightened. Great beads of 
perspiration stood on his brow, about his mouth; 
his eyes were sunken, his nostrils blue and pinched. 

“Auntie dear, you’ve come at the right moment. 
I can’t,” he hesitated, a look of agony and shame on 
his face, “get across alone. Give me your arm. I 
was waiting till some wagons came along. It’s 
easier then. Don’t say anything about it to Mizzi. 
She doesn’t understand,” he ended entreatingly. 
Bending, he passed his hand through her arm and 
with a tightening of his body, slowly crossed the 
6 treet, then kept close by the houses, as far away 
from the curb as possible. 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


137 

“You see,” he said with difficulty, “I’m quite done 
for,” tears stood in his dark, kind eyes. “And I’m 
not going to die either,” he added, “I’ve seen so 
many others go just where I’m going.” 

“Manny, Manny, you’ll get better. You must 
get better. Think of all the good you do 1 ” his aunt 
cried at last out of her grief for him. She hadn’t 
been able to say a word at first, only pressed more 
closely against his side. 

“All the good I do!” he laughed bitterly and 
stood quite still in the street and couldn’t seem to 
stop laughing. 

What was happening to Manny, dear, kind, lov¬ 
ing Manny? He made her even sadder than 
Kaethe. Where could he get help? Perhaps 
Fanny . . . they’d been such a loving brother and 
sister. Perhaps if he could take a trip, somewhere, 
anywhere. . . . 

They were proceeding at a snail’s pace. Her= 
mann’s step had no life in it. Frau Stacher began 
to be afraid they would be late and tried to hurry 
him a little, but he continued to move mechanically 
with that sort of heavy dip, and didn’t seem to no¬ 
tice her hurry. 

As they reached the house he pointed to his name 
in black letters on the white porcelain sign, and then 
looked at her with a trembling of the lips just as he 
used to do when he was a little boy and had some 
childish grief. 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


138 

“When I remember all the happy years . . ., 
why, I thought I was going to heal the world,” he 
said slowly, “and now”—then he added, suddenly 
anxious too, “I hope we’re not late.” 

Tante Ilde gladly quickened her step and they al¬ 
most ran in at the doorway. It would be a calamity 
to be late. Mizzi could generate about her a thick, 
cold, opaque atmosphere when she was displeased 
that could take away the appetite or impede the di¬ 
gestion of a starving person. They both knew that 
it wouldn’t at all do to be late, and in spite of age 
and disabilities they made quite a dash up the stairs. 

Mizzi kept a servant and kept her busy. No 
“Faulenzers” in her house. Gretl instantly opened 
the door, then quickly resumed her occupation of 
setting the table, putting a pleasant, soft-looking 
little bread at each place. 

Mizzi, sitting up very straight in a mauve arm 
chair, was measuring with a tape measure lengths 
of pale shining French ribbons, billowing over a 
little grey table. She was a woman in the early 
thirties, with dark eyes inclining to opacity, abun¬ 
dant dark hair and an agreeable, smooth, rather 
bright complexion, pleasant enough to look at, 
though her features were negligible. She held 
herself very erect, even as she sat there was no lol¬ 
ling or relaxing, and when she stood that full, smart 
figure of hers was impressive, even commanding. 
Pauli who detested her, said she ought to have been 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


i39 


a midwife, though perhaps in that he was unjust to 
the profession; but it was undeniable that Mizzi 
had an eye that in a few years would, as he had 
further remarked, have no more expression than a 
hard boiled egg confronted with arriving mortality. 

The little table was drawn up by the window with 
its lavender hangings striped yellow by light and 
years, and held back by faded ribbons. It was all 
quite different from the smart freshness of the shop 
where was Mizzi’s heart. Between the windows 
was a picture of the Prague Gate and in rummaging 
about she had unearthed, for less than a song, a fine 
old engraving of Wallenstein conspiring at Pilsen. 
Where could one find a more loyal Czecho-Slovak 
than Mizzi Bruckner, bound hand and foot to 
Austria?—Till she got to that little shop in Carls¬ 
bad, over how many dead bodies she cared not— 
that little shop especially designed for easing for¬ 
eigners of their golden loads, that she was unswerv¬ 
ingly headed towards and would inevitably reach. 

As they entered aunt and nephew gave each other 
an involuntary look of relief. They had made it. 

“Well, Tante Ilde, how are you?” Mizzi asked 
amiably enough as she looked up, but there was 
something steely in her tone. She had no objection 
to Tante Ilde, except that Tante Ilde was so def¬ 
initely, and it was easy to prophesy, permanently in 
the class of poor relations, and to such a certain 
tone came spontaneously to her voice. No trace 


140 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


of the sugary accents that she used in speaking to 
the large, dark women who made commerce take its 
only steps in the paralyzed city. She was polite, 
bu-t she was cold beyond the power of any thermom¬ 
eter to register. Of her husband, Mizzi took not 
the slightest notice. 

Frau Stacher felt something shrink and shrivel 
in her. A shameful consciousness of being very 
poor, of being very old, of being very useless tinted 
her pale cheeks. 

She hadn’t wanted to come to Mizzi’s. She had 
known that she would feel just that way if she did. 
They all knew about Mizzi, hard as a rock, some¬ 
body for the old, the feeble, the dependent to steer 
clear of. 

Then a thick, snjoking lentil soup was put on the 
table. Some pleasing suggestion of having been 
cooked with a ham-bone came from it. In a quite 
definite way it changed the atmosphere. Good 
food in Vienna that winter could work miracles. 
Natural and unnatural antipathies would melt as 
dew before the morning sun when enemies found 
themselves seated together at a full table. 

Mizzi herself underwent a subtle change and she 
was nearly smiling as they sat down. Hermann was 
still pale, but the blue look had gone from his 
nostrils, the sweat about his brow and mouth had 
dried. Tante Ilde was permeated by the delightful 
sensations of the hungry person about to be 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


Hi 

filled. . . . The nose, the eyes, then the first 
mouthful. . . . 

The soup quite fulfilled the expectations awakened 
by its odor. Mizzi never had materials wasted 
through poor cooking in her house. She always got 
the best available and this last maid had a light 
hand. Mizzi had turned one girl after another 
away till she got the pearl for which she was 
looking. 

The repast, as far as her own feelings went, 
proved a surprise to Mizzi, though she didn’t ana¬ 
lyze the increasingly pleasant sensation that ani¬ 
mated her as the conversation got easier and easier. 
Mizzi didn’t for an instant, suspect that that de¬ 
spised, poor relation was distilling about her an odor 
suaver than that of the lentil soup, even with its sug¬ 
gestion of ham-bone. 

By the time the herrings, and the potatoes boiled 
in their skins, and actually served with butter were 
put on, Mizzi was in full flood of conversation; her 
tongue was hung easily anyway, quite in the middle. 
During the soup, she had been distinctly grand with 
Tante Ilde, the immensely superior lady bountiful 
dispensing mercies, but Tante* Ilde was so greatly 
and so genuinely interested in the shop and asked 
such tactful questions, just the sort Mizzi was de¬ 
lighted to answer, that things got pleasanter and 
pleasanter. She showed signs of irritation, how- 
even when Hermann, not too successfully, tried 


i 4 2 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


with his left hand to separate the meat of his herring 
from its backbone, and gave an impatient click of 
her tongue and cried harshly, “give it here.” But 
that passed and when the Apfelstrudel was put on, 
she fell to telling amusing stories of the unbelievable 
ways of the various stupid geese, those wives of 
profiteers who had, all the same, lead her, Mizzi, 
out of the captivity of hunger and cold. She made 
fun of their horrible underclothes and told how she 
changed all that, opening their eyes to a lot of other 
things to which they’d evidently been born blind. 
Even Hermann got less pale and from time to time 
looked affectionately across at his aunt. When they 
were having their coffee, just as they used to in the 
good old days, real mocha, that one of those very 
“Schieberinnen” had given her, Mizzi even said 
quite gently to Hermann: “Aren’t you going to 
smoke?” Hermann was surprised and grateful be¬ 
yond measure. Very little would once have made 
so soft-hearted a man as Hermann unduly and per¬ 
manently grateful. Mizzi, though she hadn’t the 
slightest idea of it, was continuously responding to 
the pleasant harmonies struck from the gentle being 
of her poor old aunt by marriage, and when they 
had drunk the last drop of coffee and were still en¬ 
joying the pleasant memories of the Apfelstrudel, 
she found herself saying, somewhat to her own 
surprise: 

“Tante Ilde, come with me, I want to show you 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


I 43 

the shop. It’s time for me to get back. The girls 
don’t take a stitch while I’m away!” 

Then she stepped into the kitchen to put on a 
plate, for Gretl’s dinner, a head of one of the 
herrings and two potatoes (the others were to be 
saved for salad that evening), and to the amaze¬ 
ment of Gretl, she added a bit of the Strudel, cast¬ 
ing at the same time an appraising eye over what 
was left and which she certainly expected to find 
intact on her return. 

Tante Ilde longed to stay with Hermann whose 
plight was more and more engaging her thought and 
sympathy. She had had time while Mizzi was in 
the kitchen to press his hand lovingly and to tell him 
she was going to Kaethe’s to-morrow, and to try 
to get there too, Kaethe was worrying about Carli. 
He had answered listlessly, 

“Yes, if I have a fairly decent day. You’ve seen 
how hard it is for me to get about.” 

Instinctively she had not mentioned the Eber- 
hardts in Mizzi’s presence. It would have dark¬ 
ened her brow and salted unduly the repast. People 
that couldn’t get a living somehow! Mizzi had no 
use at all for them. In some mysterious, but certain 
way, it was their own fault. Even the Peace was 
no excuse in Mizzi’s eyes. 

When she came back from the kitchen saying 
briskly, and they realized, without appeal: 

“Well, are you ready, Tante Ilde?” Frau Sta- 


144 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


cher hastily put on her coat, that is as hastily as 
possible. It had tight sleeves and they always stuck 
on the little white shawl she wore underneath for 
warmth. Mizzi came to the rescue, gave it a poke 
down the back, a pull about the shoulders and 
crossed it over the‘frail chest with a final energetic 
punch that left Frau Stacher breathless. Then she 
slipped easily into her own ample coat and turned 
up its large beaver collar. But after all Mizzi 
pleased, Mizzi on the road to success, was not so 
terrifying. She was safely diverted out of family 
discontent by the pleasantly exciting difficulties and 
triumphs of her business. Then, too, those thin, 
pale girls who sat by the window at the back of the 
shop, and worked without looking up when Mizzi 
was there, were continual escape-valves. 

Even little Tilly with fingers like a fairy, got her 
share. No one could tie a bow like Tilly, not even 
Mizzi herself, and then those diaphanous garments 
that she turned out, delicate bits of nothing, the very 
stitches themselves were like trimming. Mizzi 
knew first class work when she saw it, and she fur¬ 
ther saw that she got the greatest amount possible 
done in the day. 

Tilly’s mother was dying in a back room, reached 
by a third stairway in the court of an old house, 
and Tilly never answered Mizzi back, was never 
“fresh” and it was quite evident that she never 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


145 

dreamed of giving notice but only of giving satis¬ 
faction. 

In face of Mizzi’s pleasant, flowing briskness 
that could, however, so easily curdle into thick dis¬ 
pleasure, Tante Ilde, though she longed to stay, 
could but say goodbye to Hermann, with a secret 
pressure of his hand. For a moment she felt the 
encircling warmth of his great chest and shoulders 
as he bent down to kiss her. Then he sank heavily 
back into his chair. She turned at the door for a 
last sight of him, but already he was plunged in his 
thoughts and did not look up again. She could 
have wept for Hermann then and there. 

As she followed Mizzi down the stairs, they met 
two young-old women with pale, head-heavy babies 
in their arms. 

“Manny’s patients,” said Mizzi who was really 
a terrible woman, an abysmal contempt in her voice, 
“I don’t know how I put up with it.” 

“Manny is very ill,” answered Tante Ilde gently. 

“Nerves,” returned Mizzi promptly, finally. 
“We’d starve if I hadn’t started in.” 

“You are a wonder,” said Tante Ilde, and quite 
honestly she thought it was little short of a miracle, 
how Mizzi in that dreadful city had not only wooed 
but won fortune. 

Of course, they all knew that Fanny had started 
her, but even so she was a wonder, making money 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


146 

that way. She would survive. It was beings like 
Hermann who went under,—gentle, loving, wise, 
once-strong Hermann. 

Her thoughts clung tenaciously to Hermann, 
slumped down into his chair, Hermann who hadn’t 
looked back at her. She couldn’t know that he 
had, for quite a while, been conscious of her loving 
touch on his arm, and that he was thinking, “some¬ 
time I’ll tell Tante Ilde about Marie.” Yes, while 
he was still able to talk clearly of precious things. 
It was one of his worst days. Often on such days 
he didn’t keep his office hours . . . the uselessness 
of the terrible struggle. In that city of misery, let 
a few more die in those black hours before dawn, 
without warmth or food or even a match to strike 
a light that those who loved them could see them go. 
He was losing, and was conscious of its slipping from 
him, that strong professional feeling of saving life, 
any life, just to save it, fulfilling a deep instinct, 
working according to habit that was as natural to 
him as breathing. Sometimes nothing mattered, 
not even Mizzi’s lash-like tongue on his bare nerves. 
On other days, difficult as it was to get over the 
open places, he would leave the house quite early 
in the morning, trying to shake off its devitalizing 
atmosphere. There was a cafe off the Opernring, 
he didn’t have to cross the Ring itself to get to it, 
where they knew him and his little ways; sometimes 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


i47 

he would sit for hours at a certain table watching 
the coming and going. 

But that morning he’d got there too early; it was 
still deserted and he had been witness to certain dis¬ 
mal preparations for the day. A pale woman in 
damp, thin garments was washing up the floor, ends 
of burnt-out matches and cigarettes were piled in a 
corner, in a little heap on a chair were a few care¬ 
fully collected cigar ends. The pikkolo under the 
emphatic direction of a waiter was brushing off the 
billiard table, the Tarok games were being laid out, 
the newspapers put into their holders. The pik¬ 
kolo, who put one in upside down, had forthwith 
received a box on the ear from the waiter, supple¬ 
mented by a kick on that part of his undersized 
person where, however, it would be least injurious; 
but his reaction was not against the donor of these 
morning favors, but rather induced the consoling 
thought that if he ever got to be headwaiter he 
would return it with interest to whatever pikkolo 
was then about. 

The arrival, a bit late, of the buffet Fraulein, 
with her blond hair too tightly crimped, too thickly 
puffed, started things at a more lively gait. A pale 
lavender tint lay over her face—the hair bleach, the 
rice powder, the long hours in the crowded room. 
Energetically she proceeded to count out a few 
lumps of sugar, unlocked noisily from behind the 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


148 

counter; then she looked scrutinizingly at the liqueur 
and fruit-juice bottles, holding them up to the light, 
her pale eye appraising the exact condition of their 
contents. 

One by one frequenters of the cafe began to come 
in, dissipating more and more the forlornness of 
the place, wiping their feet on the wire mat, putting 
their bulging umbrellas into the stand, hanging up 
their dull hats, sitting down in their overcoats, tak¬ 
ing packages of paper money from their pockets 
and putting them on the table just as if it weren’t 
money. Finally the cafe was quite full and Her¬ 
mann sitting before his empty cup, smoking and 
watching apathetically the familiar sights, became 
conscious of the passage of time. He remembered 
that Tante Ilde was coming to dinner that day and 
he wondered what Fanny could have said to make 
the arrangement possible, it was so unlike Mizzi. 
Then he looked at his watch and saw with immense 
relief that he still had a little time, ... a calamity 
to be even that short distance from home, ... he 
hoped he’d get back, . . . sometime probably he 
wouldn’t. He had been thinking all that morning 
with an obsessing, nightmarish horror of something 
that had happened to him in his own office the day 
before. . . . Because a pale, uncertain-yeared 
woman had had nose-bleed, he had been overcome 
by a horrible nausea, an intolerable, hitherto un¬ 
known feeling in the pit of his stomach. Why, he 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


149 


had seen blood, felt blood, smelt blood, worked 
swiftly, calmly in blood against time and death— 
and now a pale woman with a nose-bleed. . . . 
He’d had to go into the inner office. ... It was 
unbelievable that just that could happen to him. 
Then after she had gone, after they all had gone, 
he sat thinking about it and he had laughed terribly, 
loudly, and then trembled and wept and Mizzi on 
the other side of the landing knew nothing about it, 
no one knew, no one must ever know just that. 
Yes, he was going very fast. He knew it himself; 
knew that he was headed for the madhouse, as 
straight even as towards death. Some day he’d do 
something of a sort that nobody had any right to 
do. Often he would awake, icy cold, at the fear of 
what he might do. He couldn’t imagine at all what 
it woufd be, but something that people who were 
dwelling freely among their fellowmen were not 
allowed to do—and rightly. . . . 

Sometimes his thoughts would turn with nostalgic 
longing to the gay, full years of his student-life; 
those busy years as intern at the Allgemeine Krank- 
enhaus. The luck he’d had when old Professor 
Schulrath but a year before his death, had taken him 
as assistant. . . . The eager beginnings of his own 
private practice; that unforgettable thrill the first 
time he had seen his shingle hanging outside his own 
door. . . . Pride bound up with a hot intention to 
conquer misery, pain, death even. Soon he had 


150 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


found himself fully launched on the tide of an ever- 
swelling general practice. Then one Sunday at 
Pauli’s he had met Mizzi,—full-bosomed, soft- 
voiced Mizzi, underneath as hard as a rock, as cruel 
as the grave, crueller than the grave. . . . 

That whole first year of the war he had been 
among those detailed for general duty in the great 
city. Afterwards, the civilian population was left 
to be born or die as best it could. Every available 
physician was rushed to the front. The mortality 
among the wounded had become too great. Poor 
fellows sent back from one or the other fronts 
would sometimes have been two or three weeks in 
their uniforms, still in their first-aid bandages, or 
not bandaged at all; and when they got to Vienna 
after the torture of their transport in springless 
luggage-vans, there was often little to be done for 
them except bury them in those great mounds that 
grew and grew as the hospitals eased themselves of 
their dead. It had to be managed less wastefully. 
Lives were to be saved that they might be thrown 
again into the struggle. . . . 

He had partaken of the tragic, senseless exalta¬ 
tion that able-bodied men everywhere were ex¬ 
periencing on starting for the front. . . . Then de¬ 
liverance from the carping tongue of Mizzi; the 
simplest things more and more caused her to fly 
unexpectedly up in the air like a rocket; there would 
be a sputtering and something would darken and go 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


151 

out. These were among the reasons why Hermann 
had settled back in the motor that day and with a 
laugh set out for the front. But there was some¬ 
thing else that none of them had known about, that 
then, that now, was always in his mind, in his heart, 
in every fibre of his being. Even when he was 
watching the most indifferent things, such as the 
buffet Fraulein that very morning,—he didn’t need 
to be alone—suddenly she would be with him and 
fling her lost radiance around him once again, and 
wrap him up into that magnetic world of longing for 
the might have been. He wouldn’t hear the “wer 
giebt,” “Pagat,” “an’ dreier” of the Tarok players, 
or the rustling of newspapers being turned on their 
sticks, or the “Sie, Ober,” or the “Pikkolo, du dum- 
mer ,”—she was always more real than anything 
else, . . . even at the cafe, when he would be hold¬ 
ing the Neue Freie Presse and pretending to read. 
She was everywhere and all. Even as he dropped 
back in that chair, with Tante Ilde’s touch still 
warm upon his arm and his eyes apparently fixed on 
the quite uninteresting enlarged and colored photo¬ 
graph of Mizzi’s dead father, (Mizzi, year by year 
was getting to be his very image, with that hint of 
moustache) he was thinking only of her—Marie. 


That January of 1915, one windy, icy twilight, he 
had had a hurry call from the Elizabethspital and 


152 VIENNESE MEDLEY 

had put off many patients still waiting and closed 
his office. 

Before he got to the gate of the hospital grounds, 
out in the street even, he found row upon row of 
stretchers laid down low upon the earth, bearing 
shattered forms whose silence was more terrible 
than groans; their grey cloaks were wrapped about 
them, their poor boots, in which they had marched 
to destruction at the word of command, were mostly 
tied to the handles. . . . Pale faces, bandaged 
heads, arms crossed on their breasts or inert by their 
sides, under their capes. . . . Raised but a foot 
from the ground where the stretcher bearers had 
deposited them they looked already like their own 
graves, as grey, as voiceless. Yet the biting cold 
of that windy twilight was heavily charged with 
their unuttered groans. 

Within the hospital it was still the same. The 
corridors were blocked. Outside the douche rooms 
they waited for their turn. At last clean, sheet- 
covered, they waited again at the door of the 
operating room. 

He had met Marie von Sternberg that very eve¬ 
ning ... so quiet, so deft, her pale blue eyes so 
compassionate under her heavy, dark brows and 
lashes, her jaw so nobly strong, her hands so beau¬ 
tiful in spite of the discoloration of acids and dis¬ 
infectants. He had suddenly noticed her hands as 
she was passing him a probe. 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


153 

But he hadn’t looked at her face then, it was 
only some hours after,—not even in a pause, for still 
the men were being brought in,—when a young, 
yellow-haired Tirolese had been put on the table. 
As Doctor Bruckner bent over him, he had cried out 
in a loud voice “Mother” and had suddenly given 
up his youthful ghost. Then Doctor Bruckner 
found that he was looking full into the blue eyes, so 
heavily lashed, so darkly circled, of the woman at 
his side. He saw there a spark of the same ever¬ 
lasting pity that flamed in his own. They hadn’t 
said anything even then, for quickly the youth had 
been carried away and his place had been filled by a 
swarthy family man from one of the Slavic Crown- 
lands, his wedding ring still hanging about the finger 
of his mangled hand. Hermann had never for¬ 
gotten either of those two men, for in between them 
was set, like a jewel in death and pain, that look that 
he and Marie von Sternberg had exchanged. 

All that winter, that winter of his content, of his 
happiness, they breathed the same air, did the same 
work, to the same end. Those afternoon hours had 
been, quite strangely, enough for happiness. In 
the early summer she had been sent to the Russian 
front. When he was mobilized she was still there, 
and that was the true reason why he was laughing 
the day he left Vienna. A thousand miles of battle¬ 
field and ruined towns might lie between them; then 
again she, like himself, might be sent where the need 


154 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


was greatest, their roads could easily converge. 
He hoped blindly, confidently from the war; all his 
hope was in its vicissitudes. 

Then one evening, after the fiery setting of a 
hard, red sun over a scorched, interminable plain, 
the dim air thick, with odors of blood and death, 
cut now and then feebly by disinfectants used not 
too generously, as he stood outside that hospital 
tent, thinking of her, longing desperately for her, a 
quick, light step approached, he heard her voice: 

‘‘Hermann, it is I.” 

And all the dust and fatigue, the blood and agony 
that covered his body and his spirit fell away and 
turning he had cried out her name in straining 
passion. 

They had embraced in such deep longing that they 
seemed to be lost out of time and space ... to be 
together, even for that minute . . . even in that 
way. . . . 

The battle-field with its dreadful debris had 
seemed to Hermann Bruckner like some paradisaical 
garden. . . . And those glorified days of Septem¬ 
ber, October that followed, the unit keeping up as 
best it could with the great army throwing its roads 
and bridges across the Pripet marshes. . . . 

Then one day she had had fever; two degrees 
only, but suddenly she had sickened terribly, sick¬ 
ened hopelessly, and died immediately of ty¬ 
phus. . . , Hermann who had hung over her 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


i 55 

hadn’t taken it, but he hadn’t been able to live or 
die since. He’d just gone from bad to worse; he’d 
done his work, yes, that was what was left; she 
would have been doing hers if he had died. . . . 

But after Gorizia, he had known it was all over 
with him, as a man that is; as a poor hulk of flesh 
and blood and bones and nerves, oh, there were per¬ 
haps many years waiting for him. Sometimes when 
he looked at his nerveless arm he remembered how 
warm and firm his clasp had been in hers, hers in 
his. . . . There were so many things to think of 
before he ceased to remember. . . . Rarely her 
spirit visited him in that house of Mizzi’s. . . . 
But in his office continually he found her, some¬ 
times in each ailing, miserable body he seemed to find 
her, beautiful and of an endless pity. Oh, he 
needed her. Even without his arm, that way it 
would have been all right. Something could al¬ 
ways be done if the will is there. . , . But without 
her he no longer willed anything. 

Yes, he was very ill, but not in a way to die. 
Death might not come to him till he had forgotten 
everything, even Marie. . . . 

Mizzi was like a sharp point in his being. She 
had worn sore spots all over him, and strangely 
from Mizzi he must receive that which would keep 
his will-less breath in his useless body. . . , 

But Mizzi really knew nothing about her hus¬ 
band, indeed never had known anything about him, 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


156 

beyond his name and age and personal appearance 
and a few of his habits. Now he weighed a thou¬ 
sand tons upon her life. 

When with her aunt in tow she turned into the 
Plankengasse, she was in the usual pleasingly ex¬ 
pectant state with which she was wont to approach 
her shop. As they neared it they saw a dark, 
stout, ponderous female dressed in a thick, brown 
cloth suit, a heavy black hat with waving ostrich 
plumes, a long sable scarf hung inelegantly about 
her heavy shoulders, projecting herself cumber- 
somely from a much bebrassed auto. 

“That’s one of them,” said Mizzi, eagerly, 
greedily, “it’s Frau Fuchs. You’ll die laughing, 
she doesn’t know beans about anything, but that 
big bag of hers is full of banknotes.” 

In a moment, Mizzi, in velvety accents was 
greeting Frau Fuchs as if she were a queen. She 
touched appreciatively the sable scarf, lauded its 
beauty, saying, “You certainly get the best of every¬ 
thing.” Then she turned and presented her aunt, 
Frau Kommerzienrath Stacher, born von Berg. 
Mizzi laid it on thick, resting some of her 75 kilos 
on the Kommerzienrath, adding the full weight of 
the others to the “von.” Then she proceeded to 
show Frau Fuchs a certain red velvet jacket with a 
little gold border, and Frau Fuchs had gone into 
raptures over it, and had said she must have it, and 
then her eye had lighted on a leather hand bag 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


157 

ornamented with Irma’s medallion of “petit point.” 
Though Frau Stacher recognized it, she was some¬ 
how not surprised to hear Mizzi, as she drew atten¬ 
tion to its workmanship, say that it had been made 
by a certain Archduchess, positively starving, and 
Frau Fuchs sniffing up the subtle perfume of royalty 
that Mizzi’s words caused to rise from the bag, 
had taken it eagerly. “No, is it true?” she had 
cried in ecstasy, and had drawn her glove from her 
thick, beringed hand and opened her humpy alliga¬ 
tor skin bag with its loud green and gilt clasp and 
counted out a sheaf of banknotes. Mizzi herself 
had wrapped the bag and the dressing sack up in 
her finest paper and sent one of the girls (the one 
who did the least good work) out to put the parcels 
into Frau Fuchs’ Mercedes. 

“Isn’t she awful?” said Mizzi when they were 
alone, “but without her and a lot more like her, 
we’d starve. Her husband is stone-rich, has an Ex¬ 
change Bureau in the Karntnerring. How she used 
to hate to pay out the money! But I changed that, 
she’s a bit afraid of me.” 

There was indeed something awe-inspiring at mo¬ 
ments about Mizzi, something that she could invoke 
to decide wavering purchasers. Then still under 
the charm of Tante Ilde’s gentle but quiet apprecia¬ 
tion, also under that of good business dispatched, 
Mizzi gave her a little handkerchief. It had a yel¬ 
low stain on it that they hadn’t been able to get out, 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


158 

still it was a handkerchief and a gift, and Tante Ilde 
gratefully receiving the attention for much more 
than it was worth, thought perhaps she had mis¬ 
judged Mizzi. 

It hadn’t been at all bad going to her for dinner, 
except for that terrible depression when she thought 
of Hermann. No, it hadn’t been at all bad that 
first time, and she repulsed certain lurking suspicions 
that every week might prove too much for Mizzi’s 
longanimity. 

Then, too, she had good news to take back to 
Irma; the bag had been sold, Mizzi had counted out 
the money that she had promised Irma for the me¬ 
dallion, and though it didn’t in the slightest corres¬ 
pond to the price Mizzi had received for the bag, 
Tante Ilde could be trusted to keep that hidden in 
her breast. Indeed Mizzi said it had cost her a 
monstrous amount of money to get the bag mounted, 
that she didn’t know how she could afford to take 
anything else from Irma, she hadn’t made a kreut- 
zer on that bag, she only did it to help Irma, etc., 
etc. No, Tante Ilde didn’t repeat from one to 
the other. Those little households that day by 
day were spilling their secrets before her whom 
they received in charity,—out of their goodness, 
out of their pity,—were sacred to her. 

That night, as she lay awake hearing Ferry’s 
hacking little cough, she was thinking almost en¬ 
tirely of the plight of Manny. Nothing had ever 


HERMANN AND MIZZI 


i59 


been too much for Manny, when it came to doing 
something for some one else and now. ... If the 
time did come for Manny to be put somewhere, 
Mizzi would have money to pay for him, and what 
she didn’t do, why Fanny, there was always Fanny. 
Down which ever miserable road of their misfor¬ 
tunes they looked, Fanny glitteringly stood, Fanny 
dispensing benefits generously, easily, not always 
wisely, after her own special way. Tante Ilde sud¬ 
denly felt she didn’t understand the first thing about 
life, and she had filled the three-score and ten of the 
allotted span. When did one begin to understand? 








THE EBERHARDTS 
































V 


THE EBERHARDTS 


Rallentando 

“Susses Leben! Schone, freundliche Gewohnheit des 
Daseins und Wirkens! von dir soli ich scheiden!” 

Frau Stacher had folded up the light brown 
camel’s hair blanket with the dark brown Greek 
border that she had slept under for years and the 
sheets with the von B-S monogram and put them, 
together with the equally familiar pillow on which 
her head now so uneasily lay, into the divan and 
shut it down. Then she stood up on it and dusted 
the flat white and gilt vase under the picture of 
Haydn leading the young Mozart by the hand. 
Finally she pulled back the curtains of the alcove, 
which last gesture always seemed to wipe her com¬ 
pletely from the room, somewhat as if she had been 
carried out in the final box. Her movements were 
brisk, with a businesslike dispatch about them. She 
looked years younger than when she had stood that 
afternoon gazing at the trolleys clanging down 
Mariahilfer Street, and which, striking out their 
noisy, powerful flashes of light, had seemed like 
163 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


164 

heavenly chariots, conveying certain fortunate 
ones, strongly, swiftly over immeasurable cobbly 
and asphalt stretches to their homes, to their al¬ 
coves even, out of sight and touch of the damp, 
cold misery of the streets. 

She had put on her oldest suit, with the black and 
white stripes without once thinking that it had al¬ 
ways been a failure. Business—pleasant business 
was engaging her attention. But she stood at the 
door a moment too long, holding in one hand her 
umbrella, in the other a large, brown, string bag. 
In her worn pocket-book was money to buy where¬ 
with to fill it. Her eyes were bright; in her cheeks 
was the faintest pink. Irma was irritated in spite 
of herself at the sight of that brisk fervor. 
She knew perfectly well the chronically desperate 
situation of the Eberhardts, yet to see her sister- 
in-law stepping lightly over the threshold with that 
bag in her hand, going out to buy food that she, 
Irma, could well have used for her own children, 
provoked an unreasoning envy. Frau Stacher had 
not dallied in face of that sombre look, that terrible 
look, born of the brooding solicitude about food, 
food, that seemed to hold but slightly in leash un- 
namable things. She fled hastily before it. Only 
Irma’s nerves. But she had come to know a 
lot about Irma’s nerves in those few days. Irma 
was a beast of prey for her children. No one 
and nothing that came into conflict with their in- 


THE EBERHARDTS 


165 

terests had the slightest chance with her. Ferry’s 
cough seemed suddenly from one day to the other to 
get worse. She had taken him to his Uncle Her¬ 
mann, and his Uncle Hermann had said to Irma in 
the back office, while Ferry turned over a sport 
journal of eight years before in the front room: 

“What’s the use, Irma, he needs milk, eggs, high 
air.” 

Had he said pearls, diamonds, rubies, it would 
have been the same to Irma. How not to sink to 
irrecoverable depths with that sinking population of 
which they were a part, was Irma’s one thought. 
The rent was a small matter. For a long time she 
hadn’t paid anything. At least the “crazy gov¬ 
ernment” prohibited turning families into the 
streets, even if they didn’t pay. All the govern¬ 
ment really wanted to know was that every room of 
every apartment was filled to overflowing with sam¬ 
ples of the Viennese populace. 

In that back office Hermann had further said, 
tentatively: 

“Perhaps . . . Fanny would send him away for 
a while,” 

Irma had tartly answered: “Fanny, it’s always 
Fanny.” 

But all the same the suggestion, though annoying, 
had fallen on fertile soil. She had been turning 
over certain possibilities, or rather methods of ap¬ 
proach for twenty-four hours and she was terribly 


166 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


jumpy, ... if that slender, aging figure had stood 
a moment longer on the threshold with that string 
bag, sign and symbol of marketing . . . Nerves, 
nerves. After a moment Irma had gone on with 
her petit point.' She was putting the pale brown 
background around the delicate moss-roses,—really 
quite lovely. Mizzi, for all she’d hum and haw, 
would take it, but at her own price, Irma was re¬ 
flecting bitterly. She pulled the red shawl closer 
about her and bit off absent-mindedly a piece of silk 
on a tooth that needed filling, then miserably, with 
a groan, she continued her work. Tante Ilde had 
said something about her own teeth that morning,— 
she had a loose front one that was beginning to hurt 
unmercifully every time she took anything hot. But 
at that age, Irma had thought disdainfully, what 
did it matter if they all fell out? Money for a 
dentist at that age, in such times I Now she was 
full of Ferry’s need, of plans for him. She hadn’t 
yet decided how to go about the matter which pre¬ 
sented certain undeniably delicate points. Even 
Irma, obsessed by mother-love and mother-fear, 
was aware of their delicacy. 


The Eberhardts still lived in the apartment they 
had taken when they married, on a street in the 
Alsergrund, near the University. It had once 
seemed very big, magnificent even for two people,—r 


THE EBERHARDTS 


167 

now their handsome, hungry children overflowed it. 

The family had been very proud of Kaethe’s dis¬ 
tinguished young husband; “a genius” they would 
always say impressively to less fortunate friends 
when speaking of him, and dwell delightedly on 
Kaethe’s relations with the University and with cer¬ 
tain distinguished people who visited Vienna when 
the Kaiserstadt was a font of wisdom. Her hus¬ 
band was indeed well-embarked on a brilliant career, 
any and all honours were possible; Privy Counselor 
certainly, and later perhaps a “von” to his name. 
When scientific Congresses met in Vienna, he was 
always called on to read papers, and colleagues from 
other cities were eager to confer with him. He 
often used to bring one or the other home with him 
for coffee, proud of his smiling,, soft-eyed, bright¬ 
cheeked wife, of his lovely babies, his comfortable 
house. When things began to get bad, Kaethe 
would tell the children what she used to have for the 
“Jause,” that extraordinary, incredible meal that 
came in the afternoon, between other meals,—coffee 
and chocolate, with thick whipped cream, (the now 
quite legendary “Schlagobers”), apple tarts with 
butter dough, the fresh coffee cake, and certain little 
crescents that would fairly melt in the mouth. The 
children were in the habit of asking their exact 
color, shape and taste, they seemed quite unrelated 
to the War and Peace bread that alone they were 
acquainted with, and certainly they never could have 


i68 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


sprung from the same harvest field. The real dif¬ 
ference between milk and cream, too, was an ab¬ 
sorbing topic, and they all loved Resl’s joke that if it 
rained milk instead of water she would be out all the 
time looking up with her mouth open, though Maxy 
invariably reminded her that it would be better to 
take a pail and bring a lot home and then everybody 
could have some. When Lilli learned at school 
about the milky way, she taught them a game called 
living at number i Milk Street. But lately they 
hadn’t talked much of the “Jause” of the old days, 
nor made so many little jokes. They were tired 
when they got home from school and only errands 
connected with food had any interest. 

Though all of Herr Bruckner’s family were mu¬ 
sical in their easy way, Kaethe had a real talent; she 
could not only play through by ear the latest oper- 
ette, but Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, with a sure 
yet fiery touch. Eberhardt had played the ’cello 
since his boyhood. Sometimes Kaethe, her fingers 
tapping out a measure on the table after the piano 
went, would think with hot longing of certain quar¬ 
tettes to which those walls of hers had once re¬ 
sounded. Poor Amsel who led them ... his 
songs, written during a protracted period of starva¬ 
tion in a garret, were now being sung everywhere; 
but he had been killed on the Eastern front that 
very first month of the war,—he’d scarcely had time 


THE EBERHARDTS 169 

to send back a postcard,—and had been buried with 
his talent and a half a hundred luckless fellows in a 
huge mound, that had been promptly flattened and 
all trace of it obliterated by a retreating army. 
And Koellner, with his Amati violin. Kaethe often 
hummed a motif of that Mozart trio and thought of 
herself at the piano, Koellner swaying slimly, his 
eyes closed and the long black lock falling over his 
forehead,—they hadn’t seen him after the signing 
of the Peace. As for Rosetti from Triest who 
played the viola, he hadn’t been heard of since the 
day before the mobilization, certain rumors got 
around about him. . . . 

But all these things were really as distant to the 
Eberhardts as the Tertiary Period; they themselves 
had been thrown up by the convulsions of War and 
Peace into strangely diversified, completely unre¬ 
lated strata. 

For a long time, however, those bright days had 
left the glow of their setting on the sombre war 
period. And then wars didn’t last forever, and 
when over, except for mourning mothers, things 
would doubtless be as they had been. No one fore¬ 
saw the Peace. . . . 

It had lasted four years, that first full, happy life, 
during which time Kaethe had had three children,— 
Lilli a pansy-eyed, pale-haired little girl, now grown 
too beautiful for safe adolescence, another clever, 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


170 

dark child, Resl, and Maxy who had been a “sugar 
baby” something to eat up, as he lay gurgling and 
cooing in his mother’s arms. 

The pendulum of Eberhardt’s life had swung un¬ 
varyingly between that beloved home and the 
equally beloved laboratory, where daily he pursued 
hotly, closely, certain secrets of nature, always en- 
chantingly about to be caught; or with a warm note 
in his vibrant voice and a light in his grey, specula¬ 
tive eye, communicated to eager students those he 
had already seized. . . . 

On the 28th of June came the news of the as¬ 
sassinations at Sarajevo. Unbelievable news; the 
Dual Monarchy shaken to its foundations. Its 
heir, its keystone gone like that, in a foul moment. 
Still everybody talked of the Emperor’s grief, not 
dreaming that each, in one way or another, would 
partake of that grief. They counted his many 
sorrows, scarce one save poverty was missing; the 
Emperor’s sorrows had always been an absorbing 
theme; it had got so that there weren’t enough fin¬ 
gers on both hands to record them. This, and this, 
and this and still this, had he suffered. Had not 
his son miserably perished by his own hand—or 
another’s? Had not his lovely Empress been as¬ 
sassinated? Had not his brother been put to death 
in far off Mexico? Had not his sister-in-law been 
burned to death in a Charity Bazaar? Had he not 
been obliged to exile another brother from his court 


THE EBERHARDTS 171 

for nameless sins? Had not another heir died of 
a dread disease? And other, other griefs. Now 
this last, this fatal blow in his old age, personal, 
dynastic. Those catastrophic griefs, heaped high 
with the years, in a way had become a matter of 
pride to happy Austrians, and the unhappy ones be¬ 
cause of them, had a feeling of kinship with their 
beloved “Franzerl.” Who could have foretold 
that in five years they would seem remoter, less in¬ 
teresting than those of some Roman Emperor? . . . 

For a few weeks things seemingly went on just 
the same. Suddenly Europe was in flames and from 
the conflagration no one could flee. . . . 

The first two years hadn’t been so bad for the 
Eberhardts. The Professor had been detailed for 
laboratory work in Vienna, and things went on 
somewhat as they had been going. Two more chil¬ 
dren were born. Then unexpectedly, through some 
tragedy of errors, Eberhardt found himself in a 
delousing station on the Eastern front. By that 
time, everybody was talking about hygiene as well 
as victory. But he was only gone a few months, 
returning gaunt and white, a startled look in his 
once thoughtful eye, and evidently quite unfit for 
further service. He had been side-tracked for days 
with a dozen others, suffering from dysentery, 
heaped together in a luggage van. No food, and 
worst of all, no water. The whole first week after 
he had tottered in over the threshold of his home he 


172 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


had said nothing, except repeat the word “schrech- 
lich”—terrible. Then, strangely, he got better, 
even well, and went to the nearly empty University 
every day, trying to knot the torn threads of learn¬ 
ing. Then the terrible peace broke out. The war 
had been bad enough, but it was war and unless one 
was killed one knew how to take it. The peace was 
quite another matter, a starving, freezing matter for 
women and children in city streets. The civilian 
population was suddenly plunged into it, up to the 
neck in it. . . . That collapse of the winter of 
1919, . . . that terrible food-blockade over half 
Europe . . . There was nothing to hope for, noth¬ 
ing to fight for except bread, bread, bread, in ever- 
diminishing quantities. More were going down in 
that battle in the windy city than before machine 
guns. Each street was a battle-field, heaped mostly 
with children’s bodies or the bodies of the very old. 


The Eberhardt’s apartment was far, too, from 
the Hoher Markt, but not far like the Mariahilfer 
street, Frau Stacher kept reminding herself as she 
trudged along, her string bag full and her purse 
empty, and at the end of the walk there would be 
darling Kaethe and the lovely, hungry children. 

It had not been easy, buying the most usual things, 
and the thin soup of the night before, and the 
ersatz coffee of the early breakfast had prepared 


THE EBERHARDTS 173 

her but illy for the venture. She had gone into 
various shops where unholy prices or empty shelves 
confronted her, for Vienna had mostly done its buy¬ 
ing for the day when she started forth. It was 
late when at last she found herself, quite worn out, 
hesitating in a certain provision shop, between rice 
and lentils. One got a lot more of the latter, but 
what were they unless cooked with a bit of bacon or 
fat of some kind? And she was further confused 
by the sudden memory of a certain smoking dish of 
lentils, with shining bits of pork laid around the 
edge of the platter, that she had often served in the 
old Baden days. 

There were a good many people in the shop and 
not much time for hesitating old ladies to make a 
final choice. Suddenly, tremblingly, she decided to 
take the rice, while it was there to take, for quite 
close to her, overtopping her, stood a large, hook¬ 
nosed, hard-eyed, befurred woman who was ev¬ 
idently ready to swoop down upon it all. Indeed, 
she was looking about her with an unmistakable look 
that could only come from money, a lot of it, in her 
pocket, as if, indeed, she could buy everybody as 
well as everything. No eggs, no butter, no fats of 
any kind were in that shop, but as Frau Stacher was 
paying for the rice, she suddenly saw on a lower 
shelf behind the counter an object that, had it been 
set in gold, could not have been more attractive: a 
tin of Nestle’s milk. She stammeringly asked for 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


174 

it, but as the man, placing his hand almost affec¬ 
tionately on it named the exorbitant price, and as 
trembling with excitement she was about to take it, 
the large, befurred female cried out harshly: 

“I’ll give you double what the old woman is 
paying!” 

The man,—what decency could be left in that 
fight for food, for existence?—took it out of Frau 
Stacher’s unresisting hand. A murmur went up 
from those watching the unseemly operation. But 
the shop-keeper only shrugged his sholders, mut¬ 
tered something about the “pig” war, the still pig- 
gier peace, and the stout woman, hastily paying for 
it, departed to unmistakable allusions to “pig prof¬ 
iteers.” That was the kind of world gentle Frau 
Stacher was living in. It would have been a fright¬ 
ening experience for her, but she, too, was armoured 
in that grim determination to get food. The great 
city’s fight was for food, not against the enemy at 
the gates, but for the food that was at the gates, 
and shoulder to shoulder in serried lines, they fought 
for it against each other. She, Frau Stacher, once 
“rentier” in Baden, was fighting for it. She was 
lucky to have got even the rice. Leaving the shop 
she espied on the street corner a small fruit stand. 
Some shrivelled apples, so evidently grown in the 
four winds, were being offered in little piles of five, 
by a raw-boned peasant woman, whose hands were 


THE EBERHARDTS 


i 75 

wrapped under her small, three-cornered grey shawl, 
while she stamped from foot to foot. 

Frau Stacher remembered longingly the beautiful 
Tirolese fruit that had filled the Vienna markets in 
the days of plenty. Corinne had lately had a letter 
from the adopted daughter Jella, married to her 
tall, blue-eyed, yellow-haired, square-headed Tiro- 
ler, now Italian, saying that the fruit that autumn 
had lain rotting on the ground. There was no way 
of getting it over the frontiers, those invisible but 
none-the-less impregnable walls that had been sud¬ 
denly built up around Vienna, north, south, east and 
west. Fruit and grain, sugar and fats could not pass 
over them nor get through them. 

Now those little apples, even on that raw day, 
had a strange fascination for Frau Stacher, out of 
all proportion to their merits. They certainly 
resembled in no way the full, rosy-cheeked specimens 
she had been wont to pass out to visiting nieces and 
nephews and into which white teeth would promptly, 
juicily crunch, but they were a reminder, a symbol of 
them. She longed foolishly once more to see white 
teeth dig into apples. She bought hesitatingly a 
little pile, obviously she had lost her nerve about 
shopping for food since it had become a matter of 
life or death; in the old days she had been a lavish 
provider. . . . Not much more than a mouthful in 
each apple, and certainly they wouldn’t be nourish- 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


176 

ing, but Frau Stacher was of a sentimental nature, 
and the pale, innocent eye she turned upon the fruit 
grew bluer, softer in expression. The woman, sav¬ 
ing her crumpled bits of newspaper, dropped the 
apples into the string bag and quickly put her hands, 
swollen with chilblains, again under her shawl. 

Then Frau Stacher began to think anxiously of 
little Carli, the next to the last of Kaethe’s children, 
beautiful, smiling, little Carli who had no strength 
in his legs and whose face was alabaster. Fanny 
did send condensed milk for Carli, but there was 
always an urgent reason why one or the other of 
the children, with a cold or a sore throat or a 
stomach-ache, should have some of it. She wanted 
above all things to get a can of milk for Carli. 
Thinking desperately “Saint Anthony must help 
me,” she found herself outside a small grocery shop. 
Few of the usual articles for sale in such shops were 
visible in the dusty window,—varnish, boot-blacking, 
washing-soda and other inedibles safely showed 
themselves behind the grimy panes. Somewhat 
dizzily she went in and asked for the milk. She 
wanted that can of milk more than she had ever 
wanted anything, wanted it enough it seemed, to 
create it out of empty air. The man, to her relief 
rather than her surprise, reluctantly reached down 
under the counter and passed it silently out to her, 
doubtless thinking of his own undernourished 
children. 


THE EBERHARDTS 177 

“I knew it,” said Tante Ilde under her breath, 
and she suddenly found herself delightfully warm 
as she exercised a truly a propos gratitude to the 
Heavenly Powers. She was emboldened too, and 
almost loftily asked him if he had a can of green 
peas, she wanted them to put into the rice to make 
the “risi-bisi” that the children so loved. Of course 
he didn’t have it and scarcely answered her foolish 
question. But she espied a very small piece of hard 
cheese under a very large glass,—it was extraor¬ 
dinary how many things there were in the world 
that you couldn’t eat, and how much of them! 
Then she saw a small package of “feinste Keks”, 
with its picture in blue and red of a child eating one 
in rapture. She took recklessly both cheese and 
cakes. She knew she had lost her head, and besides 
she was feeling quite faint. Buying food in those 
days, even when one of the Saints visibly stood by, 
was an exhausting matter. She brightened up, 
however, as she went out of the shop at the thought 
that another twenty minutes of putting one foot be¬ 
fore the other would inevitably bring her to Kaethe’s 
door and the heavier the bag the better. . . . 

Frau Stacher’s ring brought a scurry of young feet 
to the door, she heard welcoming shouts, “Tante 
Ilde’s come! Tante Ilde’s come!” even before it 
was opened with a rush. She was smiling a breath¬ 
less smile, after the stairs and the blessedly heavy 
bag, as she went in. It was known that she was 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


178 

coming with the dinner, but what had she brought? 
They surrounded her, they embraced her, they over¬ 
whelmed her. They were all there save Maxy 
whose turn it was to eat his midday meal at the 
Bellevue Palace, and Lilli not yet back from fetch¬ 
ing a few briquets. 

Kaethe was nursing that youngest, rosiest of her 
children who knew, as yet, only the sweet fullness 
of her mother’s breast. Carli was sitting at her 
feet, his head hanging listlessly against her knee. 
He hadn’t run with the others to meet Tante Ilde 
because he couldn’t even stand. He would laugh, 
a sweet, somewhat surprised little laugh when he 
tried to pull himself up by a chair and would fall 
down; but his mother always wanted to weep when 
she heard the soft little thud as he slipped to the 
floor. Carli was an angel. Carli, quite evidently 
to any but a mother’s eye, was not to pass another 
winter on earth. Even in the week since Tante Ilde 
had seen him he had become more and more like 
something made of crystal, so smooth, so shining, 
so transparent was his little face. But she con¬ 
cealed the sudden fear that came over her as she 
looked from him to his mother. 

“I’m nursing the baby earlier so I can be ready 
to help with the dinner,” Kaethe said as her aunt 
bent over to kiss her and Anny,—one fat little hand 
spread out over her mother’s breast, and making 
soft, contented noises,—little Anny, the last, she 


THE EBERHARDTS 


179 

must be the last of Kaethe’s children, Tante Ilde 
was thinking. . . . 

Kaethe wore a frayed but evidently once expens¬ 
ive, wadded, blue silk wrapper. It struck an un¬ 
expected note in that denuded room, whose im¬ 
mediate air of indigence was inescapable. Not only 
was the piano gone, and long since Eberhardt’s 
’cello, but gone one after the other the pleasant, 
superfluous tables and the little objects once set out 
upon them. Even the bookcases. . . . What re¬ 
mained of the books was piled in a corner and re¬ 
ceived many a careless kick from romping children. 

Whenever Frau Stacher entered that room she 
was confronted by a quite flashy portrait of her 
mother in the Winterhalter style. It had been sent 
to Kaethe’s for safe keeping and now hung frame¬ 
less on the wall. A dealer at the time she sold her 
furniture had offered her a surprising and unrefus- 
able price for the frame. The young face that 
looked out at the aging daughter, though like her in 
many ways, had a point of competent malice in 
the wide, blue eyes, that was neither in her 
daughter’s eyes nor in her heart. Sometimes, too, 
from under that broad, floppy, rose-trimmed hat 
with the long, pink streamers she seemed to look re¬ 
proachfully, severely at her daughter,—leaving her 
elegant prettiness thus unset in so cold a world. 
Frau Stacher had never felt easy about selling that 
frame, and she sometimes had useless little night 


180 VIENNESE MEDLEY 

thoughts, or equally useless morning thoughts of 
getting another. But it had been hanging just like 
that since she gave up the house in Baden, near an 
enlarged photograph, (whose pressed wood frame 
picked out with gilt no one had wanted) of the de¬ 
parted Commercial Advisor. She would gladly have 
been unfaithful to the memory of her husband, now 
become exceedingly hazy anyway, and replaced his 
image by that of her mother. But her mother’s 
portrait was square, and his photograph unprophet- 
ically had been taken in oblong form. Things were 
like that now. Nothing fitted. . . . 

Kaethe got up a moment after her aunt had 
greeted her and laid the sleeping baby in a battered 
crib in the next room, filled with beds of all sizes 
and sorts. That child was nourished. She would 
have felt quite exhausted herself, but for the thought 
of the dinner Tante Ilde had brought. She was 
still a handsome woman, in the early thirties,— 
even treading up that Calvary to which every road 
she knew now lead her, those seven roads of anguish 
for her seven children and for Leo whom she 
adored. Once, not indeed so long before, she had 
been softly, sweetly alight with a kindly inner 
warmth, that flamed easily, attractively in her face, 
in those sparkling eyes, in those bright cheeks, hang¬ 
ing about that wide, red-lipped mouth with its ir¬ 
regular white teeth. And then those quick, gcner- 


THE EBERHARDTS 181 

ous, outward gestures! Now that soft fire was 
banked and her movements were often listless. But 
as she stood by the kitchen table, she became ani¬ 
mated even gay, because of that natural gift which 
neither time, nor wars, nor miseries could quite 
destroy, and clapped her hands, as her aunt had 
known she would, and talked about the great feast 
they were going to have. The water was boiling 
and bubbling forecasting near, delicious moments 
and Tante Ilde had begun to grate the cheese which 
was sending up its sharp, appetizing odor. 

Carli had been put on the table in the very be¬ 
ginning, that he might be nearer than anybody else 
to the goodies, as Tante Ilde took one package after 
the other out of the string bag and made them guess 
what was in it. Kaethe opened the can of milk to 
prepare a drink for him. 

“Hungry,” he said turning his blue eyes some¬ 
what languidly towards her and shaking his shining 
curls about his crystal face. They all cried lovingly 
in one or another way: 

“Yes, gold child, yes, angel, yes, little lamb, you’ll 
have some soon!” 

“I bought a whole half kilo of rice,” said Tante 
Ilde grandly, “suppose,” she went on dashingly, “we 
cook it all at once? We’re seven to eat it and we’ll 
put the cheese on thick!” 

Kaethe gave a gasp. But she, too, was no saver. 


182 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


“Magnificent,” she cried. She was faint with 
hunger herself. Yes, for once . . . then she 
turned to Carli. 

“Carli must drink his mimi,” she said, as she 
held the cup tenderly to his lips. 

The other children looked on absorbed in the 
spectacle. Resl cried, drawing her breath in: 

“Carli’s having such a wonderful drink!” and 
Hansi with his eyes very big, asked, 

“Carli, does it taste good?” and they all hung 
close about him as he drank in tiny not very hungry 
sips. 

“I’d show Carli how to drink if I had the 
chance!” continued Hansi, moving his feet up and 
down in famished impatience. 

“I do wish Leo were here to see the children,” 
said Kaethe to her aunt, “but he won’t be back till 
past one o’clock, though he goes as early as he can 
to the Stephansplatz. It’s just wonderful to think 
they’re going to have enough. It’s seeing them 
after they’ve had their dinner that is sometimes the 
worst.” 

A long, impatient ring was heard at the door. 
Resl ran to open it and Lilli came in with a dash in 
spite of the broken handle of her basket of briquets. 
She threw off the disfiguring coat she wore and re¬ 
vealed herself in a very worn, sea-blue dress of 
some smooth, silky material. It lay beautifully 
about the white column of her young neck, it re- 


THE EBERHARDTS 


183 

peated the blue of her wide eyes, it heightened the 
fine pallor of her cheeks, it burnished the pale gold 
of her hair. There were gleaming bits of em¬ 
broidery in places meant to accent the curves of a 
more mature figure. Quite evidently made-over, 
too, was the elaborate, dark blue cloth dress that 
Resl wore. Indeed, they all wore garments or parts 
of garments quite patently not fulfilling their original 
raison d’etre, that struck a note of gay luxury in the 
large, shabby room. 

Lilli’s objective was the kitchen. She was 
greeted with shouts. The rice was boiling briskly, 
the odor of the cheese was in the air. The package 
of “feinste Keks,” made of a combination of ersatz 
substances meant to deceive the palate and annoy the 
stomach, looked gayly, impudently at them beside 
the little pile of apples. As Lilli took it all in, a 
tiny line that sometimes showed itself between those 
lovely eyes was quite smoothed out. 

Then Hansi made a diversion by being discovered 
with the thin rind of the cheese that his mother had 
put aside for the seasoning of another day’s dish. 

“What are you doing, Hansi?” she cried and took 
it from his chubby, six year old hand. 

“But, Mama, I’m so hungry, I can’t wait for the 
rice,” and tears rose to his eyes, “I didn’t mean any¬ 
thing bad!” 

“I know, I know,” his mother answered, those 
stupid tears that were always ready springing to her 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


184 

own eyes, “mother didn’t mean anything bad either, 
but whatever we have is for all of us.” 

Hansi had dark curls and soft eyes and seemed 
like the merest baby as he stood looking at her, 
great round tears rolling down his cheeks. But 
there was something sturdy about his thinness and 
pallor, something resistant; Hansi, like Resl, was 
one who would survive. 

Lilli and Resl followed about by Else had put the 
plates and forks and spoons on the table and drawn 
up the motley collection of chairs. 

“Is everything laid on nice and straight? Tante 
Ilde has brought us such a good dinner I” their 
mother called out as she came in with the great 
smoking platter of rice sending up its maddening 
odor and placed it heavily on the table. But she 
turned and kissed her aunt before she began to 
serve it. 

Frau Stacher was conscious of the softest, 
warmest pleasure. One moment like this and hard 
things were forgotten. Kaethe’s very expansive¬ 
ness, that could so easily be released, communicated 
joy. And Kaethe never minded how much noise the 
children made, so others were undisturbed. Kaethe 
never fussed though she sometimes wept and often 
silently despaired. But now that full platter, those 
clattering spoons! Though mortals were certainly 
composed of spirit as well as flesh, hot food, even 
one meal of it, could change everything. Yes, 


THE EBERHARDTS 185 

everything. The children got uproariously gay, and 
Tante Ilde and Kaethe began to feel sure something 
would soon happen to make things all right 
again. . . . 

Then Tante Ilde heard how Lilli instead of her 
mother, now went out early every morning, too 
early for her thirteen years, and stood in the bread¬ 
line at the bakery, (her father had tried it but had 
proved singularly inept at holding his place,) and 
how you just had to keep your wits about you or you 
would find that some one had sneaked in ahead, 
and it was such a trouble getting back your place. 

There was a certain protocol observed even at 
those bread-lines. No one with impunity was 
caught taking another’s place, that is unless there 
was a stampede by those behind if the news got out 
that there was very little left. Then what a push¬ 
ing and hurtling! Something terrible, hard, relent¬ 
less would suddenly come up out of the crowd that 
had seemed composed of pale, exhausted men and 
women and underfed, listless children. That pre¬ 
cious loaf that Lilli generally managed to bring 
home, would, with some of the equally precious 
cocoa that was in the heavenly package they got 
from the “Friends” in the Franzensplatz be the 
back-bone, somewhat weak, it is true, of their day. 
The package and the wonders it contained,—the 
little tin of lard, the little box of sugar, the little 
bag of flour, the coffee, though it could not fatten 


186 VIENNESE MEDLEY 

a family of nine people, dulled noticeably the sharp¬ 
est edge of their hunger and helped to get them 
through the week. It was really equal to several 
meals if you counted that way. Then sometimes 
a raven in the shape of old Maria, tapping, flew in 
at the door. As for the other meals, the Eberhardts 
went without them. 

It was a mystery to the Professor, surpassing any 
he had ever before tried to solve, that he could no 
longer make a living out of his grey matter. Being 
a “genius” was plainly a misfortune. It was the 
working classes, fortunate possessors of muscle, that 
frequented butcher and delicatessen shops, while 
the intellectuals and their families starved. It made 
science look like something seen through the big end 
of a telescope. Biology? Eberhardt got so that 
he hated the very word. The only science of life 
that was of any use was knowing how to get some¬ 
thing to put into your family’s stomach and your 
own. Naturally mild as summer dew, Eberhardt 
had been getting bitter. 

Those radiant years lay far behind, when a word, 
a thought would set his brain on fire, startling into 
instant action those secret springs of his talent; 
when the imponderable why and whence of man’s 
being was the paramount interest of life. The 
ponderable things necessary to sustain that life came 
naturally, undisturbingly in the train of work. 
Now his gifts were useless; the world in which they 


THE EBERHARDTS 


187 


had once functioned so easily, so shiningly, was in 
some chill, shadowy abeyance. Again and again 
came from his lips nostalgically: “Susses Leben! 
Schone, freundliche Gewohnheit des Daseins und 
Wirkens! von dir soil ich scheiden!” Sweet life, 
sweet, pleasant habit of being and activity! Must 
I part from thee?” 

He went to his classes, but with the laboratory 
completely run down, sometimes even the electric 
light didn’t work, and that listless, stupid look on the 
faces of a handful of hungry students, or that wild 
look, and everywhere the word “revolution,” there 
was certainly little incentive and less chance for suc¬ 
cessful inquiry into those whys and whences, the in¬ 
dulgence in which was gone with other luxuries. 
The great thing was to keep out of the cemetery or 
the streets or worse places of last despair, where the 
broken but undying went. It all seemed a nightmare 
from which he must awake, some tight and vicious 
circle out of which he must soon break. Yet this 
was the seventh year and all that he was, all that he 
had, those once sweet furnishings of his mind, those 
pleasant uses of his faculties were as worthless to 
himself and his family as diamonds to a man on the 
rack. 

The children got taller and thinner. Lilli was 
obviously too pretty to be out alone, unwatched. 
A terrible beast had lately followed her from the 
Singerstrasse to the Franzensplatz and then all 


18 8 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


the way home. Lilli hadn’t quite known what he 
meant or wanted, but she had been desperately 
frightened and had trembled and wept in her 
mother’s arms. 

There were, truly, devils prowling about, seeking 
whom they might devour, and Lilli, bright and beau¬ 
tiful, like a taper in the dull, grey streets, was one 
to catch their greedy eyes. 

Dark tales were whispered too, of hunger-mad 
mothers who sent their girl-children into the streets 
where such devils awaited them. Hunger,—dying 
of it,—made even mothers mad. 

Doctor Steier had told him unbelievable things 
of children in his clinic, things that the bare mention 
of had enveloped him in a thick, hot, pricking misery. 
Doctor Steier was not yet forty, but his eyes were 
deeply sunken and his hair gone white. They had 
once been colleagues at the University. . . . Lilli’s 
beauty,—it made her father’s heart both sad and 
glad. . . . 

But nobody was thinking of any of these things 
as Tante Ilde opened the package of “finest cakes.” 
Stripped of its saucy, colored paper, it proved to 
contain twelve tiny, oblong, dry, sweetish biscuits. 
She gayly apportioned out two to each child. They 
were seized upon covetously, the very thought of 
sweets could awaken, in old and young, mad, selfish, 
exclusive longings. 


THE EBERHARDTS 189 

But Carli didn’t want his and leaned his head 
heavily against his mother’s breast. 

“Carli not hungry any more,” he whispered. He 
hadn’t eaten his rice either, though his mother had 
taken him on her knees and tried to coax him with 
little tricks and stories; the girls and Hansi had 
finally divided it into the most even portions 
possible. 

His mother made another cup of milk for him and 
soaked one of his “Keks” in it; he had taken a tiny 
mouthful, then again leaned his head heavily against 
her breast and seemed to go to sleep. She got up 
gently and bearing him into the other room laid him 
on a cot near the rosebud Anny’s crib. So dear he 
was to her as she laid him down, that her heart 
seemed to come out of her breast in a great beat of 
love. The only color in his face was those violet 
eyes, which now were veiled so thinly' by his trans¬ 
parent lids, that standing back from his bed, she 
thought for an instant they had opened, and that he 
was looking at her. But he lay so still that in 
anguish she bent over him to see if the breath were 
really fluttering from his waxy lips. . . . 

When she got back into the living room that look, 
mask-like, antique, of mother-fear still lay upon her 
face. 

Tante Ilde softly rose from the table and stood 
by her without a word. “It will be all right in 


190 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


a moment,” Kaethe said looking up at her gratefully. 
“It is silly, of course, to be so frightened,” and she 
kissed the thin hand that hung over her shoulder. 

A moment later there was heard the well-loved 
sound of the latch key, but somewhat slow, uncertain 
even. Lilli ran quickly to open the door. 

Her father was not, as she expected, alone. A 
miserable little girl of five or six was clinging to his 
hand, a pale, anxious child that the wintry monster 
Life had been grimacing at and frightening terribly. 

Professor Eberhardt gave his wife one look, but 
he knew his Kaethe, and it was a look of confidence 
rather than anxiety that he bent upon her as he stood 
in the doorway,—a tall, once very handsome man, 
who had been mangled by the War, then stamped 
on by the Peace till he had lost all semblance to his 
former imposing self. His grey eyes were sunken 
into deep pits on either side of his thin, pinched nose. 
The blond beard and moustache had had the yellow 
taken out of them by the early grey of his griefs 
and anxieties. But as he stood there, his shabby 
overcoat buttoned up to his chin, some brightness 
lay about his face; it seemed for the moment quite 
filled out. 

“I met Koellner coming back,” he said to his wife, 
and then he bent gently over the child, “This is his 
dear, good little girl come to make the children a 
visit.” 

Something rose up in Kaethe admonishing her to 


THE EBERHARDTS 191 

defend her own. Another child! no, no, no. . . . 
But turn that frightened, shivering mite away? It 
was equally impossible to the elastic kindness of 
her heart. 

It was a situation that in the end beings like the 
Eberhardts meet in but one way. When that 
which they have not has been taken from them, 
they find that they have still something left that 
they must give. 

There was no doubt about its all being a shock to 
Kaethe, rather than a surprise. She couldn’t be sur¬ 
prised by another sight of misery, even though 
brought up round before it. . . . Her eyes filled 
with those weak, ever-ready tears, then she smiled 
quiveringly. At that smile for which he had waited, 
entirely trustful, Eberhardt turned to Lilli: 

“Take Marichi into the kitchen, darling, and find 
her a bite of something.” 

The children suddenly quite still, had been looking 
at the little girl. Resl thought she wasn’t too dirty, 
and Hansi that she was of a convenient age to order 
about. Else didn’t understand. 

Lilli’s thoughts were confused, only out of that 
confusion seemed to come some sudden, new under¬ 
standing. In that moment, indeed, Lilli grew from 
childhood into adolescence. She silently reached 
out her hand and received the little girl from her 
father. She gave him a long look as she did so. 
Something quite beyond the scope even of her new 


192 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


understanding, though within reach of her new 
feelings was happening. Something hard to do, yet 
in another way fluidly, hotly easy. As she was turn¬ 
ing away the child’s hand in hers, she hesitated 
then went back and threw her arms about her 
father’s neck. Eberhardt had a moment almost of 
ecstasy as he pressed his lovely daughter close to 
him in some suddenly opened heaven on earth. 
Then she withdrew herself from his embrace and 
took the child out of the room. 

“It’s a desperate case,” Eberhardt said to his wife 
after a moment’s silence, “her mother has just died, 
—consumption—and he’s starving himself. He 
knows a waiter at the Hotel Imperial who gives him 
some bread every day. . . . poor fellow, I was all 
broken up, so talented too; his clothes, only hang¬ 
ing on him, no overcoat, just buttons his jacket up 
to his neck. I told him about the Stephansplatz. 
He had a look on his face I didn’t like. He was 
so worried for his little girl. They’ve lost their 
rooms, I didn’t quite understand how. Anyway 
they’ve nowhere to go. Kaethe, I couldn’t but 
say to him, ‘Let us take the little one for awhile,’ we 
have a home,” he ended. 

Kaethe met his gaze quite clearly now. Those 
stupid, weak tears were gone. She was thinking, 
and he knew it as if she had spoken the words: 
“Every crumb that child eats will be taken from our 
own children,” But Kaethe, inflammable herself, 


THE EBERHARDTS i 93 

had caught from her husband some of that light that 
shone about his face and after a second she was 
saying and warmly: 

“But naturally, she can stay here till things get 
better.” 

Both Eberhardt and his wife were very beautiful 
in that moment wrapt in the bright flame of their 
charity. 

Just why he had met his old friend Koellner in 
the street that noontide was quite clear. It wasn’t 
for anything that he, in his own great need was to 
get out of it, but rather for what the child whose 
Father in Heaven knew that she had “need of all 
these things” was to get—in that hour and in that 
way. 

Then Tante Ilde, who had been both entranced 
and troubled at the scene, spoke for the first time 
and very gently: 

“She’ll bring a blessing into the house, Leo.” 

At that Eberhardt turned and greeted her 
affectionately. 

“Ah, Tante Ilde, pardon, it’s good to see you.” 
And as he embraced her his act of compassion was 
still so warm about him that she was conscious of 
some gentle heat, almost corporeal, emanating 
from him. 

Though his now constant preoccupation as to 
ways and means was added to those temperamental 
fits of abstraction, suddenly in that moment he saw 


194 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


distinctly the shape and substance of Tante Ilde’s 
hard destiny. That frail figure, in that worn striped 
gown, Eberhardt who never knew what women 
wore, was suddenly conscious of its old-fashioned 
cut, its threadbareness, perhaps it was its symbolic 
sense working on his imagination that saw at times 
both more and less than the run of men. He per¬ 
ceived, as under a microscope, in all its magnified 
significance, not alone that sagging face, that fur¬ 
rowed brow, that thinning hair, those broad, pale, 
colorless eyes reflecting something immeasurably 
patient under the double burden of old age and 
penury, but it was old age itself, in all its component 
parts that separated, as if under his glass, on his 
table, resolving themselves sharply into their ele¬ 
ments. He was aghast at what he saw—those 
diminutions, those withdrawals—more horrified 
than at the accidental tragedy of the Privatdozent 
Koellner. This was integral, final. She could 
hope for nothing more from time, that was clear, 
—time that brings so surely both good and evil, 
that very time that was his hope had nothing more 
for her. He repressed a cry. . . . 

Then suddenly, or so it seemed, they all got very 
gay again, with an infectious gayety. The children 
were tumbling about noisily after their good meal. 
The little stranger kept looking from one to the 
other. That desperate apprehension was wiped 
from her face. This that was happening was 


THE EBERHARDTS 195 

clearly good. She hadn’t seen anyone smile for 
a long time, except so sadly that they might as well 
have wept. She had entirely forgotten about laugh¬ 
ing. But all this was good, good, that she knew out 
of her six years. 

Then Hansi climbed up on his father’s lap and 
asked him what he had had for dinner. 

“A fine cup of cocoa, so hot it burnt my tongue, 
and a heaping plate of very good beans, only I didn’t 
feel hungry today,” he paused on the familiar 
phrase, and from his pocket he produced two 
pieces of zwieback. 

Kaethe had been watching him, suspecting his 
next gesture. 

“Eat it yourself, Leo,” she interposed quickly, 
almost sternly, “we’ve had all we can possibly eat. 
Tante Ilde brought so much.” 

But Eberhardt with no hesitation in his hand or 
heart, or at least none that one could have noticed, 
said to the strange child, the child of whose existence 
he had been unaware an hour before: 

“Come, dear child, come, Marichi,” and handed 
her the zwieback. That grimy, claw-like little hand 
closed over it. In spite of her hunger she was too 
dazed to eat. She looked from her hand up to her 
protector with the mysterious glance of childhood. 

“It’s good, eat it,” he said. She put it in her 
mouth, one piece and then, very quickly, the other. 
Hunger, she knew about it, all about it. This was 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


196 

something different and she was getting warm. 

The silence that fell somewhat heavily upon the 
room, was broken by Hansi recounting to his father, 
boastfully, stoutly, what they had had for dinner 
and smacking his lips and showing him the colored 
picture from the package of “feinste Keks”; then 
how Carli hadn’t wanted his rice and how they had 
had that too. 

“Carli isn’t well today,” said Kaethe, “he seems 
so languid, but he’s asleep now. He dropped off 
as soon as he had had his milk.” 

“I’m coming every Thursday,” put in Tante Ilde 
comfortably at this point. She was feeling quite 
happy, almost joyous. “Fanny,” she added in an 
aside, “sent word by Maria that I was always to 
get enough for everybody!” 

Eberhardt flushed slightly but made no answer. 
Lilli and Resl were getting on their coats. As Lilli 
again put on her mother’s old black cloak over her 
blue dress it was as if a snuffer had been put over a 
light,—a white, blue and gold light. Her father 
was content that it was so. About Resl they didn’t 
worry. There was something strong, inevitable 
about her, even in those young years. She was 
clearly one who would get through. She was very 
like her mother, but behind that soft, dark resem¬ 
blance was something steely that Kaethe had never 
had. 


THE EBERHARDTS 197 

Things were always happening to Resl,—pleasant 
things. Those bright-dark eyes of hers, that round, 
smiling face that somehow kept its roundness 
through all those terrible winters, had something 
compelling about it. An American woman on one 
of the relief committees had seen Resl on a windy 
day looking into a delicatessen shop, and had taken 
a fancy to her. She had given her a meal a day for 
two months, and shoes and other things, often some¬ 
thing to take home, then she had passed out of 
Resl’s orbit into new circles of want. Another time 
coming home from school, Resl had stopped to 
swell the crowd around a smashed taxicab, and 
some one had cried, “Do look at that bright-eyed 
little girl!” and had given her a ten shilling note, 
—just like that! She hadn’t understood what they 
said, but their smiles that she promptly returned 
and the money that she dashed home with were 
perfectly intelligible. Once she had found a gold 
piece in the street, when she and Lilli were going 
along together; of course she had been the one to 
find it. Lilli when she saw Resl pick it up, had 
hoped that it had been dropped by some very rich 
person, instead of by some one who hadn’t anything 
else. To Resl, however, such fears were unknown, 
she would always take unquestioningly whatever 
goods the gods provided. 

Tante Ilde was telling them about the woman who 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


198 

had grabbed the milk out of her very hand, and 
Hansi was saying with his chest out and his eyes 
ablaze, 

“I’d have beaten her well, Tante Ilde,” when they 
heard a scream from the next room,—a terrible 
scream, despair and supplication were in it. 

Eberhardt and Tante Ilde rushed in followed 
by the children, Marichi stayed behind, cowering 
again. That scream had something frighteningly 
familiar about it. 

Kaethe was holding Carli up to the window, 
where the light shone full on his baby face . . . 
quite gently, quite easily, Carli had slipped from 
them leaving only his little waxen image. 


Throughout that long night Tante Ilde kept 
miserably repeating to herself: “A child came in, 
a child went out,” finding herself in a confusion of 
faith and doubt dark as the night that lay about her. 

Irma was confirmed in her opinion that charity 
was dangerous. 


VI 

CORINNE 




VI 


CORINNE 

A la Sourdine 

Das Herz ist 
ein weites Land. 

But towards morning Frau Stacher’s heart threw 
off its sorrow; she had suddenly felt its weight leav¬ 
ing her breast, why or how she did not know, for 
there in that distant house whence Carli had forever 
gone one she loved was still weeping. Perhaps she 
was done with grief,—long grief. 

She was strangely all love that morning after the 
night of tears. Love emanated from her with 
a gentle radiance and played about her warmly. 
She loved even Irma. Even Irma who on account 
of her nerves couldn’t bear to see that fine, soft 
light in her sister-in-law’s eyes. An unreasonable, 
unseasonable light given the fact that one child had 
been reft away and another might as easily be taken. 
She should properly have been creeping about with 
her spirit quenched, instead of looking almost happy. 
It struck Irma, who was inaccessible to metaphysical 
changes, even as unseemly, and she proceeded to ex- 
201 


202 VIENNESE MEDLEY 

tinguish it, somewhat as a wet finger on the flame of 
a candle. 

“Corinne today, but who’s taking you tomorrow?” 
she asked flatly, meanly. Irma had* a way, well tab¬ 
ulated in the family, of getting over pleasant spots at 
the quickest pace possible. 

“Tomorrow,” Tante Ilde answered, the light in 
her eye indeed put out, but her face quite pink as she 
stepped into the kitchen to put the broom, worn 
dawn to its wooden handle, back in its dingy corner, 
“Tomorrow,” she continued resolutely as she re¬ 
appeared, “I’m going to Fanny’s.” 

“To Fanny’s!” echoed Irma blankly and started 
to cry “I find it disgraceful!” But she stopped 
quite short as a thought came to her. . . . The easy 
way to do a hard thing. A little more of that 
money! What did she care ? She wanted Ferry to 
live. 

“Won’t you tell Fanny about Ferry?” she began 
again, but gently, almost imploringly. 

There was a long pause, in which the thick-boned 
figure of the woman her brother had loved loomed 
up before her in an imperative, almost menacing atti¬ 
tude as she waited for the answer. She had been 
bending closely over the hemstitching she was to 
finish that day for Mizzi. She had large, square¬ 
shaped hands, but she held deftly and delicately the 
diaphanous trifle that Mizzi would sell to some thick 
lady. Now she laid it down and took off her 


CORINNE 


203 

glasses, showing her eyes very strained. Her face 
seemed to broaden, her cheek bones to get higher, 
the spot of color on her cheeks was dyed deeper, 
harder. Everything was accented about Irma in 
that minute. Even the red of the little, fringed, 
three-cornered shawl was like life-blood spilled over 
her shoulders as she waited for her sister-in-law to 
answer and there was something increasingly mina¬ 
tory about her. 

Strange, Frau Stacher was thinking, that Heinie 
should have desired her, Heinie almost an old man. 
But she couldn’t really reason about such things, cer¬ 
tainly not in that pause. Her thoughts had wan¬ 
dered because she was feeling quite dizzy and then, 
of course, she would do it. Irma might have known 
that. Those three boys had to be helped somehow 
into manhood, according to their needs. A gener¬ 
ation lay between the two women, yet for a moment 
Irma, with that ancient mother-fierceness in her face, 
seemed the elder. She continued staccato: 

“Ferry’s got to go to the mountains. Fanny can 
send him if she will. Fanny’s rich. Fanny’s in the 
only good business for women in Vienna.” 

Frau Stacher felt the blood rush to her face. But 
it was pity for Irma that suddenly reddened her 
cheeks rather than shame for Fanny. All the pity 
of her heart for a moment spent itself lavishly on 
that unloved sister-in-law. 

“It’s one of the reasons I’m going—for Ferry. 


204 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


I’d thought of it too, and tomorrow you know it is 
Fanny who is taking us all—with Carli, to the 
cemetery,” she answered finally with an immense 
gentleness. In her heart she handed that business 
of Fanny’s to God, and she hoped He wouldn’t take 
His price for it. 

Irma suddenly broke into wild weeping. 

“Don’t speak to me about Carli again. I can’t 
bear it. My Ferry, my son, my first born, he must 
live.” 

Then she tried to stop weeping. Those hot, salty 
tears that were scalding and dimming her eyes were 
an indulgence she could ill afford. 

“Tell Fanny everything about Ferry, help him not 
to go where Carli has gone,” and she stepped quite 
close to her sister-in-law, her hands clasped. “You 
are truly good,” she found herself unexpectedly, 
even softly, ending. 

Then Frau Stacher, warm with a love that was 
not for Irma, but whose warmth spread infinitely, 
embraced her, saying: 

“Don’t weep, Irma, we’ll surely arrange about 
our Ferry.” 

The two women spoke no more. Irma’s sobs 
turned into long, quivering sighs and her sister-in- 
law soon after slipped out. 

Somewhat reproachfully the thought came to Irma 
that Tante Ilde did, perhaps, bring a blessing into 
the house and that she, Irma, had needlessly wiped 


CORINNE 


205 

away the look of happiness on her face. They all 
knew that she adored Corinne. Why couldn’t she 
have let her have her pleasure, which was certainly 
not costing her, Irma, anything? And she remem¬ 
bered how broken her look and voice had been as 
she told about Carli the day before. Then repent¬ 
antly almost, she thought that, after all, Tante Ilde 
couldn’t be comfortable in that little alcove, though 
as she didn’t know about the need of being alone, she 
couldn’t understand just how uncomfortable. Then 
she thought that she would not ask her to draw back 
the curtains. She even fell to planning how when 
Ferry went away she would put Gusl to sleep in the 
alcove and give the little room to his aunt. Her¬ 
mann had terrified her by saying that Gusl ought not 
to sleep any longer with Ferry,—was it really as bad 
as that? That was one of the things that made it a 
further nuisance having Tante Ilde. Then suddenly 
with the whole wild strength of her being, the 
strength of untamed generations living by the wild 
Plitvicer Lakes, she thrust her arms out and 
would have burst the too-narrow walls of that dwell¬ 
ing, made room, room, the way one had room there 
where she was born—out of the terrible city. 


Frau Stacher got out to find the sun shining on 
the slippery streets, still covered, from the cold 
rain of the night, with a thin, glass-like substance. 


20 6 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


She went cautiously, slowly along. From St. 
Stephen’s half-past eleven was sounding. She had 
plenty of time. Then she became aware again of 
a new and evil discomfort that had made itself 
felt from time to time that morning; not at 
all the usual undernourished, discouraged feeling, 
but as if something inimical, foreign to her body, 
had got into her circulation; unpleasant little shivers 
kept running up and down her back. She was 
relieved, however, for the moment of the weight of 
her penury. Corinne truly loved her. Corinne 
truly wanted her to live. She knew that, knew it 
as she knew that she existed. Corinne, lovely, lov¬ 
ing Corinne. She could have sung a hymn to her. 
She crossed the Revolutionsplatz. It was still a 
little too early to go to the restaurant Zur Stadt 
Brunn where she was to meet Corinne at noon,— 
and perhaps find herself alone in the restaurant with 
her empty purse, if anything happened to prevent 
Corinne from coming. No, she couldn’t have borne 
any such “blamage.” She was timid about so many 
of the most usual things. She then crossed the 
Lobkowitz Place, looking, for an unrelated in¬ 
stant, up at the Lobkowitz Palace—long the French 
Embassy. She had once been used to read eagerly 
about Royalty and the “First Society” going to re¬ 
ceptions there, their titles, their decorations, their 
gowns, and how their jewels shone in the great 
marble ballroom;—now past, all past—both for 


CORINNE 


207 

them to do and for her to enjoy. She slipped falter- 
ingly down the street to go into the Augustinian 
Church. She wanted to pray for Corinne,—that 
Corinne might have her happiness. But Corinne’s 
happiness was a tangled affair. Corinne’s happiness 
could only come through Anna’s death, and how 
wish the death of any being? As she knelt down 
she found that she had to put from her the thought 
that human destinies resemble hot peas jumping 
about in a pan,—no more meaning than that. Then 
her heart repented the wickedness of her thought 
and she was able to put it from her, and to pray that, 
as it was quite evident that she, Ildefonse Stacher, 
could not be trusted with a little happiness, the Lord 
might in some way trust Corinne with it. Then she 
prayed for Carli, though Carli, bright among the 
angels, needed no prayers . . . for Kaethe, Leo, 
Hermann, Ferry—Fanny. 

Her knees were trembling as she knelt, and she 
felt a deathly cold, a grey cold, it seemed to her, like 
that of the stones of the high-vaulted church. She 
got up stiffly. Noon was sounding from the tower 
as she passed the marble tomb of one of Maria 
Theresia’s daughters, so beloved by her sorrowing 
husband. She herself might well have taken posi¬ 
tion among the carved, grey, mourning figures that 
stood before the entrance to the tomb, so drooping, 
so shade-like was she. 

As she went out the terrible, mumbling old man 


208 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


with sore eyes held open the door for her; the pale, 
young cripple who stood by him didn’t move when 
he saw that spectre of genteel poverty. So many 
just like that went in and out of the church. They 
had no more to give than he himself. . . . 

The sun for a moment was fairly flooding the 
winter streets; they shone in bright splashes of 
wetness. She stepped across the road into the door¬ 
way of the restaurant. To enter a restaurant again 1 
Such a simple thing, she’d been doing it all her life. 
She felt like a fish suddenly thrown back into its own 
waters. 

Corinne was crossing the street. The light was 
very white and dazzlingly enveloped her slender, 
swaying figure. How sweetly, softly her blue eyes 
shone as she approached. 

“My little Dresden china Auntie!” she cried and 
kissed her right there in the doorway. Then they 
passed in and made their way to a table. 

“For three,” said Corinne, “a gentleman is com¬ 
ing. Shall we wait a moment, Auntie dear, before 
ordering?” she asked as they sat down. 

Now the smell of the small, fresh rolls that the 
waiter was counting out, somewhat as he would once 
have counted gold, and three of which he had put on 
their table made Frau Stacher suddenly quite faint, 
but the feeling was so familiar and she was so happy 
to be there with Corinne that she only said: 

“But naturally,” knowing, too, for whom they 


CORINNE 


209 

waited, and her eyes looked more deeply into 
Corinne’s than she herself was aware of. 

Corinne glanced away with that oblique glance 
that could veil her thoughts more completely than 
fallen lids. She flushed slightly. 

When Tante Ilde spoke again it was to say: 

**I just missed you last night. I was again at 
Kaethe’s, only a few minutes after you had gone. 
. . . Fanny was there.” She leaned heavily against 
the table and continued, “I couldn’t bear not to go 
back. We mustn’t weep for Carli,” but all the 
same tears filled her eyes and Corinne’s own were 
wet. 

No, truly she knew one needn’t weep for Carli, 
but she felt so stupidly weak, there in that warm 
room with an abundant repast about to be served 
to her; she leaned more heavily against the table, 
she wanted terribly her soup, but after her way she 
said nothing and was able to continue, as she broke 
off a piece of her roll and began to eat it: 

“Kaethe’s grieving for Carli just as if he were 
her only child,” and both childless women, soft as 
their hearts were, looked at each other not quite 
understanding. 

“You ought to see the wreath of white roses that 
Fanny brought and coffee and cake. She was so 
sweet. She kissed Kaethe, in that way of hers . . . 
you know, and when she knelt by Carli she wept 
as if her heart was going to break. She was always 


210 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


so fond of children when she was a girl. She would 
kneel awhile by Carli and then she would come 
back to Kaethe. She kept saying she should have 
done more, that she was a wretch, a monster, you 
know how she is, and it ended by Kaethe’s com¬ 
forting her. I made coffee for them all.” 

“I thought she’d go when she knew,” began 
Corinne slowly, to add suddenly as a child, with a 
wondering look: “Tante Ilde, I don’t understand 
anything about anything.” 

Though her aunt returned her gaze there was 
no answer in it. She didn’t understand the least 
beginning of anything either. 

“I’m going to Fanny’s for dinner tomorrow,” she 
said at last picking up the thought at its only concrete 
point. And this time there was no blush in her face. 
Why always blush about Fanny? 

“To Fanny’s tomorrow?” Corinne echoed quickly 
and turned a deep scarlet, the color flooding her 
face to disappear under the low brim of her hat. 
Tante Ilde at Fanny’s! It was the ultimate dis¬ 
order in their upset world, the rest of them, yes, 
any, all of them if need be, but not Tante Ilde. 
There was something snow-white about Tante Ilde. 
Three score years and ten in a grimy world had left 
on her no slightest smirch, and even now in the 
process of her despoilment she was at times blind¬ 
ingly white. That whiteness was the one ornament 
she still wore and became her exceedingly. 


CORINNE 211 

“You can’t, you mustn’t,” said Corinne slowly 
after a moment. 

“I can, I must,” answered Tante Ilde firmly, find¬ 
ing herself suddenly in a new position, far the other 
side of both good and evil. “She didn’t want me 
to—at first,—but I begged her so. She brought 
me back from Kaethe’s in a taxi last night. Co¬ 
rinne, I knew when I went there again that I was 
going to be brought back, that I wouldn’t have to 
walk, though I couldn’t know it would be Fanny. 
. . . She threw her arms around me and wept and 
said she was miserable herself, that she would be 
better off dead.” 

Neither of the two women let themselves wonder 
what her griefs were . . . Fanny’s griefs. . . . 

“I thought tomorrow you would go to some nice 
little cafe or just buy something for yourself and 
eat it at Irma’s,” continued Corinne lamely for one 
so generally adequate. 

“Perhaps another time,” answered her aunt with 
an involuntary gesture of putting the chalice from 
her as Corinne spoke of Irma. It was her nearest 
approach to complaint, but Corinne quite knew 
what it meant. 

“Except for Carli it hasn’t all been too bad?” 
she questioned entreatingly. 

“No, no, indeed, truly. Only I’ve seen so much, 
Inny,” she answered saying the baby name for Co¬ 
rinne, so long unused, “so much of—of human 


212 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


beings,” she ended quite detachedly and her eyes 
got very wide and wandered a little. 

“Irma is hard, I know,” and Corinne put her hand 
out to find her aunt’s, to hold her attention, “but she 
has that alcove and I thought, too, it would be a way 
to help the boys. I’m always worrying about the 
boys, and then it’s almost impossible to find a place 
to lay one’s head.” 

“The foxes of the earth,” began Tante Ilde with 
a still stranger look on her face and then stopped. 

Corinne was overcome by a quick anguish. 
Something was hurting her terribly though she 
couldn’t have said which one of many things, and 
her aunt was suddenly as someone she had never 
known. 

Tante Ilde had always had her little phrases and 
mottoes—but not like that. “Time brings roses,” 
she would say consolingly to any child who was un¬ 
happy in the old days. “Hard work in youth is 
sweet rest in old age,” when the boys wouldn’t study; 
and she often reminded the girls that “Beauty goes, 
but virtue stays.” 

“You’re looking so pale, darling, you’re not ill, 
are you?” Corinne asked, after a moment breaking 
anxiously into that new, disturbing silence. 

“No, just a little cold, my shoulders ache a 
bit,—then all the tears,” she answered, “nothing 
more.” 


CORINNE 


213 

“Are you warmly enough dressed?” pursued 
Corinne, after another pause during which her eyes 
had wandered again to the door. 

“Oh, yes, I have on two waists,” and she smiled 
weakly. 

“I believe you’re faint for food,” said Corinne 
at last, with a strange, burning look on her face, 
“we won’t wait for Pauli, we’ll have our soup right 
now,” and she called the waiter. 

It was still early and few people were in the 
restaurant, the waiters mostly standing idly around, 
smoothing their hair or flicking their serving napkins 
about as they talked, but it seemed to Frau Stacher 
an eternity before the order was taken and another 
endless period till the soup was brought and the 
waiter poured it hotly, appetizingly from the smok¬ 
ing metal cup into her plate. The first spoonful did 
its blessed work and the palest shade of pink came 
into her face. It seemed more delicious than any¬ 
thing she had ever tasted and she pitied all poor 
creatures who felt as she had been feeling and were 
not, like her, sitting before a steaming plate of bean 
soup. 

“It’s the tears and the fatigue, and perhaps a 
bit of a cold coming on,” thought Corinne as she, 
too, partook gratefully of her soup, quite ready for 
it after her three hours at the bank, working at 
those interminable billions that threatened to run 


214 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


into trillions. Life at the bank was now composed 
of seemingly countless zeros, orgies of zeros, and 
often a fine headache after. 

As they took their soup, with what remained of 
their rolls, they ceased to mourn for Carli, . . . 
something bright and beautiful that had been and 
was no more. . . . They didn’t try either, to look 
into the wherefores and whys of Fanny’s existence, 
neither its splendors nor its miseries, though as 
Tante Ilde was taking her last spoonful of soup, she 
leaned across the table and said, a confidential note 
in her voice, something deprecatory too: 

“Last night the boys didn’t wake up, but Lilli and 
Resl kept peeping in at the door while Fanny was 
there. They followed me into the kitchen when 
I was making coffee and asked about ‘Tante Fanny;’ 
if I’d noticed how sweet her furs smelt and if I’d 
heard how her bracelets tinkled, she wears a lot 
of bracelets, broad bands of jewels that jingle 
and glitter. Lilli wanted to know who her husband 
was and Resl said, ‘Ssh, she hasn’t any,’ ” ended 
Tante Ilde with a sigh. But Corinne had ceased 
to listen, inherently fascinating as the theme of 
Fanny’s bracelets was, for behind that pale waiting 
she was in a turmoil. Suddenly she flushed and 
then as suddenly grew white. 

Pauli was standing at the door looking about. 
In a moment he was beside them and as he sat down 
in that eager way of his, life seemed to stream from 


CORINNE 


215 

him, more than he needed for himself, something 
overflowing, always something to give. 

He was just as kind to Tante Ilde as to Corinne. 
She didn’t feel a bit in the way . . . for once . . . 
like that. She was again in a world where given 
enough to eat and a warm place to eat it in, human 
beings still loved and longed for each other, not 
simply for food and shelter. A whole cityful of 
human beings with hearts and brains as well as 
stomachs thinking solely about what they were going 
to eat! It suddenly seemed a terrible waste to her 
... in a world where there was love, beauty, wis¬ 
dom, hidden, lost though they might be. 

The waiter was standing by them with his pad 
in his hand waiting for the ladies to decide or for 
the gentleman to decide for them. Nothing like 
that had happened to Frau Stacher since the winter 
before she lost her income. The soup had put 
new life into her, and if it hadn’t been for that 
vaguely evil thing she felt in her veins, she would 
have been almost her own gentle, pleasing, easy 
self again. 

“Don’t look only at the prices, Tanterl,” Pauli 
was saying with his smile that so easily became a 
laugh. “How about half a young chicken with rice 
for each?” he suggested lavishly, surprised to find 
it there on the otherwise meagre list. 

“Oh, Pauli, how reckless! If we’re going to have 
meat, boiled beef would be nice.” Indeed to Frau 


216 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


Stacher, desperately needing the stimulus of meat— 
any kind would have done, though the boiled beef 
she humbly suggested didn’t inhabit the Paradise 
where young chickens abided, eternally cut in two 
waiting to be cooked and eaten. 

“But not at all!” he cried, “we’re going to have a 
feast,” and he gave the order for the chicken and 
asked for the wine-card, selecting an Arleberger, 
that a friend in Budapest made a specialty of. 

Tante Ilde felt vaguely, pleasantly like a woman 
in a romance, interesting but unreal. It wasn’t 
only the food, but that looking at the menu and 
ordering right out of the heart of it, without 
other guide than what was the best. It conjured 
up the agreeable ghosts of those far-off comfortable 
years; and then to be carried along on that stream 
of love and immediate affection. She blessedly 
forgot the dark depths of those waters that surged 
about Pauli and Corinne. . . . 

“Next week, if you insist, we can be less grand,” 
Pauli was saying, “boiled beef then, and the week 
after no meat at all. That’s the way it goes in 
Vienna now,” he continued cheerfully. And then 
Corinne in her pleasant way of alluding to pleasant 
things said: 

“Auntie, you remember the ‘marinierter’ carp you 
used to give us at Baden on Friday?” 

Frau Stacher flushed at this that was like a blow 


CORINNE 


217 

on memory, but she only said with a retrospective 
look, 

“Yes, Frieda did do it well,—and the Fogosch 
too,” she added. In those days the beautiful blue 
Danube had seemed to fill one of its natural uses in 
supplying her table with that, her favorite fish. But 
it all seemed strangely uninteresting to her. She 
was trying vainly to keep her thoughts, so unaccount¬ 
ably, so uncomfortably wandering, close within her 
body, within that pleasant room from which all three 
of them must too soon depart. 

Pauli’s love was almost visibly enfolding Corinne, 
just as his affection was flowing about Tante Ilde. 
So different the two, as different and distinct as two 
primary colors, yet blending. She felt wrapt in 
something warm and many-colored, and what its 
pattern was she no longer tried to see. Then 
suddenly and anxiously she was aware that there 
was still the transparency about Corinne that, 
as she watched her approach that morning, she 
thought had come up from the wet, shining streets, 
but there in the warm, dark restaurant it was the 
same. . . . 

Her likeness to Fanny, too, was very apparent, 
there were but two years in time between them, . . . 
though so many other things. . . . She had never 
noticed it so clearly, not even when they were 
children. The same blue eyes, with their sudden 


218 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


oblique look; in Corinne it was disturbing, in Fanny 
devastating. The same pale, shining hair, the same 
fine nose; only in Fanny all was more accented, more 
complete. Her eyes were bigger and bluer, her 
hair yellower and thicker, her complexion more 
dazzling, the oval of her face more perfect. Yet 
Corinne . . . her face had not indeed the glitter 
of Fanny’s blinding, noonday beauty, but its moon¬ 
beam charm was forever working its own pale 
magic. . . . 

Then the half chicken for each with its little round 
mound of rice was brought on, and though Pauli 
took out his glass to look at his, and speculated on 
the evidently not distant hour of its hatching, still it 
was quite delicious, and that shining gravy over the 
rice! 

“I’m speculating in everything,” he continued 
vigorously, “I’ve joined the Black Bourse Brigade, 
it’s where you pick up trillions,” and with an airy 
gesture he pulled out a wallet and showed Tante Ilde 
some magic-working dollars and some potent Eng¬ 
lish pounds, but which last in a subtle way gave 
place to the noisier charm of the dollars. 

“Everybody speculates,” he went on, “the lift 
boys in the hotels, the porters ^t the stations, the 
old women selling newspapers. Everybody. It’s 
in the air.” 

Then as they were finishing the last of the rice 
and gravy, with little crumbs of bread added so 


CORINNE 


219 

that not a bit should be lost, Corinne gave voice 
slowly to what she had in mind, looking narrowly, 
slantingly at Pauli: 

“Tante Ilde is going to Fanny’s tomorrow for 
her dinner.” 

“To Fanny’s tomorrow?” he questioned in an 
astonishment that caused Tante Ilde’s face to flush 
a deep rose. To Pauli’s way of thinking though 
a good many things were done, certain others 
weren’t. Tante Ilde’s going to Fanny’s clearly fell 
under the latter head. Saints and sinners were 
mostly all the same to him. One could rarely tell 
which was which anyway, but somehow this . . . 

“Fanny is so good to us—I don’t think she always 
has it,—as easy as it seems,” she faltered, feeling 
quite uncomfortable, not because she was going, but 
because of Pauli’s strange look. 

“Fanny is a good fellow,” he answered slowly, 
reflectively, but he looked at neither of the women as 
he spoke. The fact was that for all his experience 
of men and matters Pauli himself had come to a 
point where he didn’t understand anything anymore 
than they did. Life was for him, as for them, one 
great confusion. Except his terrible need for Co¬ 
rinne, clear, urgent, urgent beyond any words. . . . 
But now this picture of Tante Ilde at Fanny’s! 
Tante Ilde shining white, Tante Ilde who thought 
that all wolves were lambs inside and even in process 
of being devoured scarcely perceived their true 


220 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


nature. Life was, indeed, presenting itself in its 
most unreasonable and confounding aspect. “Much 
will be forgiven her because she has loved much,” 
was all right for everything except just this ... or 
if a daughter had been in question. Then he tried 
honestly to think, not according to that feeling that 
had leapt up in him at Corinne’s words, but accord¬ 
ing to his usual way of easy judgment. 

“Fanny has a gold heart, I can’t tell you not to 
go,” he hesitated, “she deserves it,” he finished at 
last, but evidently against the grain. Pauli was 
really very ill at ease at that special manifestation 
of the disorder of their world. Where were your 
feet and where your head? Tante Ilde at Fanny’s! 
What after all did it mean? All kinds of saints in 
the world, he knew. Still it was a pity, among a 
thousand other pities. Indeed Pauli was shocked 
in a way that neither of the women were. Pauli, to 
whom nothing human was foreign, was shocked at 
a little thing like Tante Ilde’s going to Fanny’s, 
when everybody, everywhere was up against real 
death and destruction—a detail like that and he 
who had seen everything was not only shocked but 
horrified. Riddle. Riddle. Then suddenly he 
changed the conversation and pulled out his wallet 
again, crying, without any noticeable preamble: 

“Tante Ilde must have a presentli!” 

Uncomfortably he felt that the special problem 
confronting them had grown out of material ruin; 


CORINNE 


221 


lack of security was, after all, regulating that 
situation. In a word when you didn’t have money 
you did a lot of things that you didn’t do when you 
had it. It was as plain and as stupid as that. . . . 
It put decency on an indecent footing or vice versa. 
And morality, why morality positively had its legs 
in the air. 

What little he could do for Tante Ilde wouldn’t 
be enough to give her existence a basis. He knew 
what he could do for her and what not. Life was 
now a small sheet on a big bed and whichever end 
was pulled, somebody was left bare. 

Corinne gave Pauli one of her palely flashing 
looks that always left him blinded as he laid those 
bank notes by Tante Ilde’s plate, almost in among 
the bare bones of the chicken. He had a strange 
expression on his face, something final that made 
Tante Ilde suddenly and terribly anxious, as he 
returned it. 

“Oh, Pauli dear, you spoil me,” she only said 
tremulously, glancing from him to Corinne, whose 
look like some slow-turning beacon was now shining 
upon her. But still she was anxious with a grim, 
new anxiety. Corinne’s danger was so clearly 
imminent. 

Then that fear too, passed; her existence seemed 
but a long street, with figures appearing and dis¬ 
appearing, signs and symbols were quickly flashed 
before her and too quickly gone for understanding. 


222 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


It was the processional of life that she was aware 
of for the first time. Then again things shifted and 
passed, and she found she was happy, not because 
of the money, though that was pleasant enough, 
but quite simply because she was warm and nourished 
and loved. She couldn’t, in that moment, accept 
further calamities, nor even look at the shadows 
they cast before them. . . . 

Then with that money on the table, they turned 
quite inevitably to the everlasting subject of Ex¬ 
change, which was plunging to unfathomable depths, 
and the whole population headlong after it. 

But Frau Stacher for the moment continued to 
feel pleasantly distant from the abyss, and as the 
sounds of those once almost unreckonable sums 
flowed over her cars, she caught again the agreeable 
“rentier” feeling of happier days. Corinne could 
talk in figures, too, from the vantage ground of the 
Depositen Bank. She was doing well; next year 
she expected to be doing better. “Then,” she 
looked lovingly at her aunt, “I will hunt for that 
tiny, tiny apartment.” 

“Next year!” interrupted Pauli, not included in 
the heaven Corinne’s words evoked, and so deep 
was the longing in his voice, in his words that Frau 
Stacher bent her eyes quickly upon her plate. 

He put his hand out over Corinne’s. She was 
flushing and paling under his touch; his dark, unex¬ 
pectedly small hand had, on the little finger, a thick 


CORINNE 


223 

gold ring in which was sunk a turquoise turned very 
green. That ring was somehow like Pauli. Color, 
Pauli loved it—and yet in moonbeam Corinne with 
no more color than the palest opal, than a pearl, lay 
all his desire. 

Frau Stacher had long since forgotten what 
being in love was like, the love of man for woman, 
perhaps she had never known, but suddenly it seemed 
clear, the pulsing mystery of such love, and she was 
very frightened. Just Pauli’s hand over Corinne’s 
made it clear, much clearer than his words, than his 
tone even, as he cried: 

“Oh, Corinne if everything were different, save 
you and I—and Tante Ilde! If I could only take 
you and care for you, never let you go to an office 
again—and always dress you in silver, Corinne, 
Corinne!” 

“Next year,” Corinne was repeating slowly. Her 
look was very oblique and distant, and her face was 
suddenly pale, though quite bright—as if consumed 
to pale, hot ashes in the look Pauli bent upon 
her, consumed to last resistance. 

Between these two looks Frau Stacher was 
suddenly crushed; she could scarcely breathe, an¬ 
other intolerable distress came to join that pain in 
her chest. 

Would they hold out, those two who loved each 
other so, hold out in the dark, grim city that now 
took heed of little save food? Would they build 


224 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


themselves a house without foundations, in a name¬ 
less street, above ruins? Or would Corinne wander 
alone till her sunset, homeless as a cloud? . . . 

Then Frau Stacher became aware of a great ex¬ 
haustion. The life-force had done with her, was 
slipping from her body, she could feel it retreating, 
something finally, inexorably destructive taking its 
place. . . . But those two in whom it surged so 
high, so hot? . . . 

It was over. And how is anyone to know that 
something has happened for the last time until the 
irrecoverable afterwards? Corinne had, indeed, 
sweetly said goodby to her aunt, brightly, warmly, 
visibly leaving her, as always, the gift of her love. 
But every fibre was straining towards Pauli as she 
slipped away, a shadow palely-gold about the head, 
attenuated to last expression in the black sheathe 
of her coat. Pauli, (how pale, too, as he watched 
her disappear), was going back to the Travel Bureau 
he so ably managed, seeing to it that “Protection” 
and favoritism were practiced to their fullest extent 
for those travellers who could pay for them. . . . 
Pauli who spoke all known languages; Pauli who 
could conjure up special trains from the void; Pauli 
who smoothed the way incredibly for foreign mil¬ 
lionaires come to see for themselves how things 
really were in Vienna, or for indigenous exchange 
lords who knew the time had come to travel; Pauli, 
to whom almost everything seemed easy. . . . 


CORINNE 


225 


“Get Birbach to attend to it” was the peace phrase 
that replaced the references to his luck during the 
war. Nothing was too good—or too bad—for 
those that could pay for it. On the other hand Pauli 
was often impelled to do something for those who 
couldn’t pay. Lately, too, he had been drawn 
into politics, trying to help leash those dogs of 
destruction let loose upon his country. He was 
found to have something hotly convincing in his 
talk, or he could pierce an adversary with a thin 
point of ridicule that would make his listeners laugh 
till their sides ached. It wasn’t a meal, but it 
certainly warmed them and Pauli was always sure 
of a full house. But now that love for Corinne 
had begun to waste him, to crumble his other in¬ 
terests and activities. His strength, his time were 
mostly spent madly, hotly hoping for something, 
anything, out of the void whence events come,—the 
void known to every longing heart. Pauli was 
temperamentally aware of the fluidity of life—for 
all except the very old, they were caught like fragile 
shells in the hard stratum of age. It was one of the 
reasons for his tenderness towards Tante Ilde, and 
his farewell had in it much of the love of a son, and 
the pity of the very strong for the very weak. 
So many out of her little world, in their several 
ways, had been saying their farewells to her. Of 
them all, Pauli’s alone had it been knowingly the 
last, could scarcely have been more tender. 


226 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


Then she found herself once more alone in the 
Augustinerstrasse. You were always, when you 
were old, finding yourself alone like that. She went 
on, suddenly forlorn to desperation. The sun had 
long since disappeared behind some leaden clouds 
hanging over the Capuchin Church, the rain was 
coldly falling and the streets were getting slippery 
again. The warmth in her veins was gone, the 
color departed from her face. Those unpleasant, 
sick shivers were passing thickly up and down her 
back, and that point of pain stuck between her 
shoulders. She pressed her umbrella, needing a 
stitch at one of the points, the cloth had slipped quite 
far up—when it happened she couldn’t think— 
close down about her head. The damp, hurrying 
crowds were jostling her unbearably, carelessly 
poking their umbrellas into hers. She finally turned 
in at one of the less frequented streets to get back to 
the Hoher Markt, a little longer, but out of the 
relentless pressure of the crowd. She kept thinking 
about Pauli’s hand over Corinne’s, on the table; the 
crumpled paper napkins, the few tiny bread crumbs, 
the wine glasses with their deep, red lees, Pauli’s 
dark hand with the gold and turquoise ring over the 
slim, unringed whiteness of Corinne’s. . . . She 
wanted suddenly there in the cold streets to weep 
for Corinne, for Pauli. She was conscious of some 
faint, wordless prayer that went up out of her 


CORINNE 


227 

weakness, just frightened supplication rather than 
thinking, and “Oh, my little, little Inny!” . . . 

Then her eyes were caught and held by the fatal, 
antique symbol of ultimate, entire misery that was 
inescapably presenting itself. 

There, creeping along the walls of the houses, 
under their eaves, was a very tall, pale, heavy-eyed 
woman with a child in her arms covered by an end 
of her tattered, colorless shawl. She was soon, 
very soon, perhaps that very night, to bring another 
into that wintry world. At her skirts dragged a 
rachitic little boy of four or five. . . . Das Elend. 
. . . Misery. 

Suddenly Frau Stacher’s heart grew so big, so big 
with a desolate pity that she thought it would burst 
the thin walls of her aching chest. It was indeed 
the symbol, the living, cruel symbol of the misery of 
that wintry, starving city. It was all caught up into 
that wretched group, to which so soon that other, 
unwanted and unwanting, would be added, that child 
still safe in the womb. . . . She caught her breath 
stickingly, sharply. 

Where did charity begin? She no longer knew. 
She had meant to take Irma the money Pauli had 
given her, that she might use it for those children of 
their own blood. But no, it was for this, so clearly 
for this, for beings whom she had never seen until 
that very instant and never would again. She was 
saying to herself—aloud though she did not know 


22 $ 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


it—“Let them eat once.” Then she accosted the 
woman who turned dull, unexpectant eyes upon her, 
while the little boy who knew only hard, cold, empty 
things clung tighter to his mother’s damp skirts. 

“Take this. Eat. Get warm for once before 
your time comes. Feed the children,” she cried 
hoarsely, her voice still thick with her anguish. 

The woman’s claw-like hand closed over the 
money. Some stammered words of thanks, some 
muttered “Vergelt’s Gott,” fell on Frau Stacher’s 
ears. She turned hastily away. She couldn’t bear 
to look even for a moment longer into that hopeless 
face. 

But she turned back after a few steps. The 
woman was walking almost quickly away in the direc¬ 
tion whence she had come. She knew, doubtless, 
the miserable entrance to some very relative heaven 
where if she had money she could get food, and 
if she had money she could get warm and sit or 
perhaps even lie flat on something however hard,— 
out of the icy drizzle of the streets. . . . 

Then suddenly Frau Stacher became tremblingly 
afraid that there, so near the house, Irma, out on 
some little errand might have seen her. And never, 
never could she have made Irma understand. She 
didn’t understand herself, only that it was some¬ 
thing, however ill-considered, that she had had to 
do, out of that sudden feeling of the oneness of 
life. . . . 


CORINNE 


229 

But as she entered, there in the fading light Irma 
was unsuspectingly taking some last stitches standing 
with her work held up close to the window. She 
turned, not unexpectantly, as her sister-in-law en¬ 
tered; blessings often flowed in through Corinne. 
She carried no parcel, but it might so easily be that 
she would open her old black bag with its uncertain 
clasp and say: 

“See what Corinne has sent!” 

But Frau Stacher, quite pale and spent said not 
a single word even of greeting. She seemed to 
Irma very old and broken, quite different from the 
smiling woman who had gone out a few hours 
before. She wondered again in alarm if she were 
going to fall ill on her hands and need taking care 
of? But for once she didn’t say all this, nor do 
more than frown when her sister-in-law dropped her 
wet umbrella on the floor. When she did speak it 
was only to ask: 

“Well, what did Corinne give you to eat today?” 




VII 


FANNY 










VII 


FANNY 


Allegro con fuoco 

The Viennese Waltz. 

Fanny had a cosy little apartment just off the 
Kaerntnerstrasse, a pleasant corner apartment only 
up one flight of stairs, easy to drop into. Her sit¬ 
ting room had windows looking down two ways, 
a south window and a west window. Superfluity 
was its especial note. It had been done up in vary¬ 
ing styles at varying times,—French, English, Italian 
according to the vagaries of its mistress. The 
spring of 1915 had found it Italian, but when on 
that soft, May day the Italians declared war, 
Fanny had cried: “out with it!” and had got rid of 
all her transalpine furnishings. The room had then 
settled down permanently to its more logical expres¬ 
sion of Viennese “Gemuethlichkeit,” that was ac¬ 
cented by the miseries of the once gay city that 
surged blackly about it. On the walls were repro¬ 
ductions of pictures of various well-known beauties, 
Helleu’s etchings of the Duchess of Marlborough 
and of Madame Letellier, a copy of the Marchesa 
233 


234 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


Casati in pastel by some one else. Fanny being 
quite sure that they and various others hanging on 
her walls, had no more than she herself to do with 
the war, had left them there. Between the two 
first-mentioned ladies was Ingres’ “Source” which 
Fanny was thought to resemble. 

The ill-fated Empress-queen hung over the door 
leading into Fanny’s bedroom,—the picture of her 
in profile with her heavy coronet of black hair high 
above her imperial and beautiful brow, while the 
rest fell, a dark cascade, down her slender back. 
The Emperor, blue-uniformed, his breast a mass of 
decorations, smiled pleasantly and paternally from 
above the entrance door opposite. 

The Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Duchess 
of Hohenburg, head against head in a medallion, 
hung between the windows. Above them was a gilt 
laurel branch tied with crepe. 

On one of the tables was the Empress Zita, sitting 
with four of her children, the Emperor Karl stand¬ 
ing behind her. Fanny was through and through 
monarchical. The new princelings, not of the blood, 
had their uses, but in her heart she despised them 
. . . what they were, that is, not what they had. 

Fanny’s own portrait by a certain renowned 
Hungarian painter of lovely women, on an easel, 
showed her in one of the blue gowns for which she 
was so famous. Her sea-blue eyes looked beauti¬ 
fully, innocently from under her plainly-parted, pale 


FANNY 


235 

yellow hair; one long curl, falling from the simple 
knot behind, lay on her white shoulder. Fanny’s 
hair was stranger to hot tongs or curl papers. 

The room was full to overflowing with bibelots 
of every description,—cigarette and cigar boxes, 
smoking sets, leather and enamel objects from the 
smart shops in the Graben and the Kohlmarkt. 

On the table on which stood the photograph of 
the Empress Zita, was a collection of elephants in 
every imaginable precious or semi-precious stone. 
For a time Fanny let it be known that the elephant 
brought her luck and it rained elephants; but those 
animals, mostly with their trunks in the air, had been 
superseded as mascots by rabbits and on another 
table was an array of these rodents, also in every 
possible stone; jade, crystal, lapis lazuli, carnelian, 
amber, with jeweled eyes of varying sizes according 
to the pocket and the mood of the donor. The 
collection of rabbits being nearly completed Fanny 
had begun one of birds. Two little jade love-birds 
pecking at each other on a coral branch had lately 
flown in to join a pale amber canary with diamond 
eyes. 

Fanny was an expert in the matter of getting 
gifts. There was a pleasant, compelling air of 
expectancy about her, and a pleasant child-like re¬ 
joicing when a gift was offered that induced giving. 
And then when she was out of temper those animals 
were an unfailing and resourceful subject of con- 


236 VIENNESE MEDLEY 

versation, playing often useful as well as ornamental 
roles. 

There were deep leather chairs, and between the 
windows a pale blue silk divan, that symbol of Fanny 
herself, piled with every conceivable sort of blue 
cushion, cushions with ribbon motifs, with silver 
flowers, with lace flouncings, painted, embroidered, 
of every shape and style. The carpet was blue and 
thick and soft and covered the floor entirely. In 
one corner was a large, cream-colored porcelain 
stove that once lighted in the morning gave through¬ 
out the day its soft and genial heat. A comfortable 
room indeed. No books but some piles of fashion 
journals on a little table by some piles of the inev¬ 
itable Salon Blatt. Fanny did like to know what 
the “Aristokraten” were about, dimmed and atten¬ 
uated as their doings now were. She quite frankly 
said that she never read; indeed the book of life 
took all her time and she had turned some pages 
that she didn’t care to remember. 

An old servant from her father’s house had fol¬ 
lowed her along that flowery path that had proved 
to have its own peculiar and very sharp thorns. 
She’d been witness to Fanny’s wounds and bleedings 
as well as to her successes. She scolded, flattered 
and adored. Those watchful eyes were worth their 
weight in the legendary gold to her mistress. It was 
old Maria who gathered up the remains when Fanny 
gave her suppers and took them the next day to the 


FANNY 


237 

Herr Professor’s; it was she who brushed and took 
stitches in garments before they were given to 
Kaethe. It was she who said to herself “Kaethe 
can do so and so with this or that.” Nothing was 
lost really in that seemingly wasteful house. Then, 
too, Maria had her own relatives, who nearly or 
quite starved in dark, distant streets. The chain 
of misery was endless; here and there a little place 
of plenty, like Fanny’s house off the Kaerntner 
Street. 

Fanny’s post-war principle was simple: “der Tag 
bringt’s, der Tag nimmt’s,” the day brings it, the 
day takes it. Who would be such a donkey as to 
save money that a week after would have halved or 
quartered, even if it did not quite lose, its value? 
No, spend and make others spend. Those were 
wonderful days for succeeding in a profession like 
Fanny’s. Paper money? Easy. Vienna lived to 
spend, not only spent to live. That paper money 
went stale, dead on their hands if they didn’t spend 
it. Jew and Christian alike knew that. Wonder¬ 
ful days, indeed, for Fanny and her kind. 

Fanny always went to the Hotel Bristol for her 
midday meal, sitting at a little table not far from 
the door. Everybody that came in saw her and 
she saw everybody. She was one of the hotel’s 
brightest treasures, above Princesses of blood, who 
now so often had a way of looking like their 
own maids. She was always smartly, beautifully 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


238 

dressed in her somewhat quiet style. She gave a 
light, bright touch to the dark, too-heavily decor¬ 
ated room, shone in it gleamingly, reposefully, like 
a crystal vase. 

Foreigners generally beckoned to the head-waiter 
and asked who the lady was sitting alone at the 
table near the door. And according to the ques¬ 
tioner so was the answer. The head-waiter, pro¬ 
foundly versed in human nature, made no mistakes. 

Fanny’s manners like her clothes, were impec¬ 
cable. She spoke to no one and no one spoke 
to her and she certainly didn’t look about her the 
way the green Americans or the ripe Jews did. She 
went in and out like a queen, haughtily, gracefully, 
her round hips swaying gently, her head erect, her 
beautiful, blue eyes impersonal. But then Fanny was 
always careful, not only in mien and gesture but in 
words. She was not accustomed to tell, even at her 
suppers, the sort of stories which, she heard quite 
authentically, ladies of the whole world told. It 
would have taken the distinction from her situation 
in the half world. 

That luncheon at the Bristol was her regular 
public appearance. She occasionally nodded to a 
slender, distinguished-looking, dark woman, without 
her beauty but very chic. She was the friend of a 
Persian prince who, in pre-war days had ruined him¬ 
self for her, but was now fast remaking a fortune 
in rugs. Extraordinary how many people there 


FANNY 


239 

were in Vienna who wanted to buy expensive rugs! 
People who had mostly never seen a rug before,— 
suddenly Vienna was full of them. They came 
easily to the surface of the dark, troubled waters of 
the Kaiserstadt, like rats swimming strongly, surely 
against the current of disaster; and they wanted 
quickly all the things that “the others” had always 
had. These two women sometimes joined each 
other in the ante-chamber and went out together. 
The dark woman had once been somebody’s wife; 
but Fanny had stood at no altar save the one she 
served. She would take a couple of hours for her 
toilette for those luncheons, for her seemingly simple 
toilette that no woman of the world with less ex¬ 
clusive and wider demands upon her time could hope 
to rival. She dressed sometimes for the weather, 
sometimes according to her mood, sometimes in con¬ 
sonance with the national misfortunes. After the 
Treaty of St. Germain she dressed for two months 
in black, fine, shining, smooth, silky black, and then 
because of the Count she dressed again in black 
after the signing of the Treaty of Trianon. Her 
face, in those dark days and dark deeds, shone out 
of her sombre raiment like a rift from black storm 
heavens. But after all in her blue gowns, blue of 
every shade, from nearly green to nearly purple, 
lay her greatest successes. That is why Kaethe and 
her children were almost entirely robed in blue— 
and Maria’s relatives too. 


240 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


Fanny’s own expenses, as will be guessed, were 
large. She had to spend money,—a lot of it,—to 
make money, to keep steady her situation, somewhat 
inverted, in the social body. Seven years of it and 
though she was handsomer she was older. She had 
an extraordinary canniness for all the sweet in¬ 
nocence of her blue eyes and pouting red lips. 

Her ways were irregularly regular. In the even¬ 
ing unless she went to the theatre she was always at 
home. And there had never been any falling off in 
those evenings. Good business was often done then, 
other than by the chatelaine. Princes of the old 
style had there the desired opportunity to meet the 
new lords of Austria,—men that they would 
scarcely have saluted on the street in the old days, 
men that then they only knew in their money-lending 
capacity, having their habitat in small inner offices; 
beings with money in safes behind their desks, who 
gave it out at usurious rates to temporarily or per¬ 
manently embarrassed scions of noble houses. 
Then these “Aristokraten” had had the fine steel of 
birth with which to defend themselves, a shining 
sword that had made such dealings profitable and 
pleasant on both sides. Now that sword was gone 
dull in their hands, or broken at the hilt. Life was 
a different kind of tilting ground. Gloves were 
thrown down in counting houses and then promptly 
picked up and pocketed. Those whose only occupa- 


FANNY 


241 

tion had once been to lend money now had further 
pretensions. 

It was known that at Fanny’s almost any one 
might be met. The men who came were expected 
to have an entrance ticket of some kind—money, 
wit or birth. They didn’t get a chance to sit around 
in those deep chairs, smoking those delicate cigar¬ 
ettes, just because it was so pleasant. Many a poor 
devil whose birth or wit was his only asset was 
mercifully splashed by the plenty that surged about 
Fanny. Though each Schieber really felt, accord¬ 
ing to the expressive Viennese phrase, that each 
prince could “ihm gestohlen sein,” the aureole, 
though thin, still hung about the heads of the titled 
gentlemen who frequented the little flat off the 
Kaerntner Street. 

Fanny was both hard and soft-hearted. In her 
bargains she was merciless. Her beauty and her 
arrogance were worth wagon loads of that paper 
money and she knew it. But then how lavishly she 
could give! For her family she was as a horn of 
abundance. Indeed Fanny was a sort of clearing 
house for the relief of their miseries. When you 
came right down to it she supported in some sort of 
a way a good half of the less resourceful and more 
virtuous relatives with whom Providence had so 
richly endowed her. Without Fanny they would 
have succumbed to their miseries. Instead of half 


242 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


starving they would have entirely starved. Fanny 
who hadn’t held out, sometimes wondered what on 
earth would have happened to the others if she had, 
—Kaethe and the children, Irma’s boys, Tante Ilde 
and a lot more. She wasn’t always thinking of 
them, it is true. But when she was lonely she did 
it passionately, extravagantly, and would send ex¬ 
pensive, ribbon-tied boxes of sweets to Kaethe’s 
children or to the boys. When Maria would find it 
out she would scold dreadfully and say that what 
they needed was flour and a lot of it, and that Fanny 
herself was headed for the poorhouse and Fanny 
would go off in a huff leaving a hard word behind 
her for Maria. But then Fanny was like that. All 
or nothing. Too much or not enough; beyond the 
goal or short of it. In her avoidance of the middle 
course lay Fanny’s successes and her mishaps. 
Maria was more reasonable and more constant; but 
“we can’t do everything, too many of them,” she 
would reflect, and “weiss der kuckuk,” the cuckoo 
knows, her favorite expression when in doubt, where 
they would have got what they did get, if Fanny 
hadn’t been Fanny. 

The reactions of the various members of the 
family to her methods had been at first purely tem¬ 
peramental, but according as their misfortunes 
increased, her spasmodic though continuous gener¬ 
osity had modified their sentiments as well as their 


FANNY 


243 

miseries. Indeed they were, all of them, in one way 
or another, continually running beneficently into 
Fanny, though as she was mostly invisible in the 
flesh, the “bumps” they got were apt to be of the 
soft and pleasant order. 

Fanny, who couldn’t bear Irma, a “sour stick,” 
sent the boys their winter boots, their woollen stock¬ 
ings and jerseys. Irma eagerly yet acidly received 
these reminders of relationship while in her heart 
condemnatory of the relative. Mizzi, on the con¬ 
trary, admired Fanny extravagantly and if she had 
had the necessary “talent” and what she also called 
“Fanny’s luck,” would have asked nothing better 
than to work out her problems along Fanny’s lines. 
She mostly kept her admiration locked in her breast, 
however, and generally so harsh in her judgments 
she never uttered a word of reproach where Fanny 
was concerned. Then, too, it might have got back 
to her and that wouldn’t have done at all. Fanny 
was too useful. She knew that Hermann sometimes 
went to see his sister, and she thought it a good 
thing. He might pick up something there,—which 
he never did,—but she considered it one of his least 
useless acts. 

As for Liesel, Otto had grandly and early sig¬ 
nified that it was no place for an honest woman like 
his Liesel. But then they didn’t need Fanny and 
could indulge in their virtuous segregation, though 


244 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


the reports Liesel heard of Fanny’s clothes were 
tantalizing in the extreme and she was truly sorry 
that things “were as they were.” 

As for Anna she hated Fanny with a cold, terrible 
hatred, too cold and terrible for the light of day. 
A sombre jealousy was its chief ingredient, back 
from their childhood days, but Anna had forgotten 
that and thought it was detestation of Fanny’s ways. 
She and Hermine could get along without her too. 
And then, deadliest of sins, she was convinced, 
though she had no definite way of finding out, that 
Pauli had a soft place in his heart for her. Fanny 
here, Fanny there, she was sick of it. Fanny doing 
what was done for the Eberhardts, Fanny doing 
what was done for Irma and the three little step¬ 
brothers, Fanny paying, she could bet, for Tante 
Ilde’s alcove. Ah ! Bah! 

Kaethe loved her sister very much and Eberhardt, 
from the clouds, was apt to fall as a dew of mercy 
alike on the just and the unjust. Pauli and Her¬ 
mann never mentioned her, though ’twas true that 
Pauli frequented the flat assiduously and Hermann 
would have gone oftener but for the terror of those 
open places. 

“Virtue, what is virtue?” Fanny had once cried 
to Pauli when some thorn or other had pressed 
deeply into her white flesh. And what was virtue in 
that starving city? Generous giving in the end 
assumed the supreme mien of virtue, had, indeed, 


FANNY 


245 

usurped the place of all virtues, theological and 
human. It was all, to the family, whichever way 
they looked, confusingly the triumph of Fanny’s sins 
over their own virtues. Fanny was inclined, too, to 
be pious,—in her way and at her time. She was apt 
to enter any church she was passing; what the pray¬ 
ers she offered up, who shall say? Not entirely of 
thanksgiving that in the starving city she had plenty. 
Perhaps she begged not to reach old age,—to have 
time on her deathbed. That was what she hated to 
think of. Old age! Alone! Death! Judgment! 
Whom the gods love of Fanny’s kind they certainly 
snatch young. 

Yet, how gay she could be! What life was in 
her! Even above her beauty was that sense of 
flooding life in her veins. ’Tis true her temper 
easily ran high. Maria knew well the signs of rising 
choler; blasts of that temper blew about impartially. 
Indeed she was more apt to administer a box on the 
ear than to bestow a kiss. It was often said by the 
recipients of the first mentioned gift that never was 
she so handsome as when lightnings were flashing 
from her deep eyes. It was all part and parcel of 
poor Fanny. It was extraordinary how the family 
got used to her in their hearts, though sometimes 
in words they still condemned her—and ah, if Fanny 
hadn’t been their Fanny! 

However, there she was and apparently as bright 
as one of those American dollars to be gazed upon 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


246 

in the windows of exchange bureaux, shedding their 
radiance over the dull waste of paper money. 

Obiviously they couldn’t be seen with her, nor she 
with them,—in the end no one could have said just 
which way it was. However, from her all blessings 
flowed. Pauli called her the family Doxology, 
and once when he had run into her coming out of 
St. Stephen’s, he had said, with his wide, flashing 
smile: 

“Na, Fanny, thanking the Lord God for his man¬ 
ifold blessings, that you will later pass on to the 
rest of us?” 

And Fanny had called him a “stupid ox,” and 
smiled and blushed and flicked him ever so lightly 
with the tail of her silver fox. 

It was one of Fanny’s many gifts, that way of 
blushing that she still had, would perhaps always 
have. It was indeed a confusing situation. The 
yard-sticks of the old days were broken or mislaid 
and anyway few had the energy to use them. 

When Fanny had been very ill with grippe in 
November, Corinne and Kaethe, summoned by 
Maria, had gone to see her for the first time; they 
had let it be known afterwards that it was just like 
any other place only much nicer, and that Fanny 
had been saying her rosary. Nothing hung together 
somehow. 

Tante Ilde, whose judgments were innately of 
the order abounding in mercy had had at first only 


FANNY 


247 

the most uncomfortably confused sensations at the 
mention of Fanny,—sensations rather than thoughts. 
A flush would, at such moments, mantle her cheek. 
It was when she still lived at Baden and Anna and 
Irma would come out and tell her of certain things 
that to them, Anna and Irma, were nothing short 
of shameful, an honest family, etc. Her father 
would have turned in his grave, etc., and they, es¬ 
pecially Irma, would soon have to think of the boys, 
etc., etc. Tante Ilde had been wont to listen in a 
sort of confused silence. She didn’t understand 
things “like that” anyway, was the general opinion. 
She would think glimmeringly of what happened in 
the end in novels and on the stage to women ol 
Fanny’s ways, and she would feel alarmed for Fanny 
rather than condemnatory. 

But when the races began again at Baden and they 
heard, necessarily indirectly, that Fanny, in two 
shades of blue, had been the sensation of the day, 
they were increasingly puzzled, but a touch of pride 
crept in to give a new tone to their feelings. So 
Fanny’s scarlet sins, if not washed whiter than snow 
in the miseries of War and Peace, had undeniably 
been getting paler and paler in the family eye. 

Now poor Tante Ilde shared with the others a 
certain miscellaneous satisfaction, all sorts of things 
composed the secret mixture, that came inevitably 
from the knowledge that Fanny was doing very 
well. Indeed what would they do if Fanny didn’t 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


248 

do well? It was the world upside down. But they 
were all living in that same upside-down world and 
the relativity of their misfortunes was so dependent 
on the absolute of Fanny’s fortunes that certain 
chalky lines and demarcations were fast disappear¬ 
ing. Though none of the women went to Fanny’s 
they all saw Maria, that messenger of hopes and 
fulfilments, that faithful ofjicier de liaison between 
two worlds. 


When, after her habit of recounting everything 
to Maria, Fanny had told her all about Carli and 
meeting Tante Ilde at Kaethe’s, they had first wept 
over Carli, mingling their tears as they embraced. 
Then they had a conversation concerning the propri¬ 
eties, concerning Tante Ilde’s coming to Fanny for 
dinner on the very next Saturday,—before the 
funeral. At first the thing had seemed impossible, 
just couldn’t be. Certain things weren’t done, and 
Tante Ilde—so devoted, so genteel, so innocent. 
Of Tante Ilde’s indestructible innocence there were 
no two opinions. Something to be cherished. It 
wouldn’t be “anstaendig,” decent, a word used with 
more shades of meaning in Viennese than in English. 
Equally Fanny couldn’t take Tante Ilde to the Hotel 
Bristol. Yet Fanny was suddenly very lonely for 
Tante Ilde, she had a hunger for her and Fanny 
generally gave herself the things she wanted. . . . 


FANNY 


249 


Tante Ilde, so loving, so unfortunate, the only one 
left of the older generation. Why if Tante Ilde 
died, Fanny herself, all of them, would be, dreadful 
thought, the older generation! She positively boo- 
hooed, wiping her handsome nose noisely on her 
filmy handkerchief. But for once Fanny didn’t see 
her way quite clear to gratifying her desire. There 
were things, a lot of them, that weren’t done and 
this seemed quite definitely one of them. 

She had her code and it was rigorous. But Maria 
had been saying that she noticed, too, how white and 
thin Tante Ilde looked when she had gone to take 
Irma the woollen stockings, just as if her life were 
being pressed out of her, though not a word of com¬ 
plaint, only a smile and just faint and tired, as if 
she didn’t have a place to rest her feet or to lay her 
head, “and I’ll bet she has it hard with Frau Irma,” 
finished Maria shrewdly. 

“About like sitting on pins,” answered Fanny 
with conviction, “but Pauli told me Corinne hoped 
it would do for awhile, on account of the boys, too.” 

“I could make her comfortable here for once,” 
pursued Maria insinuatingly, “a little table drawn 
up by the stove and a good oatmeal soup.” 

Maria, too, had her doubts as to the propriety 
of the proceeding. She was quite feeling around 
in the dark where you might run into all sorts of 
things. In ordinary times there would have been 
no question of such an arrangement or even during 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


250 

the War, but the Peace had levelled the ranks of 
the Viennese with the same efficiency as death— 
what, indeed, was virtue? 

“I feel so sorry for the poor, dear old lady,” said 
Maria meditatively, repeating, “I could make her 
comfortable for once.” 

“Well, you’ll probably have your way, but I’m 
against it, it just isn’t suitable,” answered Fanny 
flatly. Her aunt’s life was broken into bits but 
there was a whiteness about the remaining pieces 
that they all, according to their natures, felt must 
not be diminished. 

“But, Lord God!” at last cried Maria, whose 
voice could rise too, “they all take the money!” 

“They can’t starve, the poor things!” answered 
Fanny immediately up in arms for the family, her 
voice rising above Maria’s. 

Maria familiar with the signs of trouble, lowered 
her own. 

“It’s different her coming here,” Fanny began 
after a pause with an unexpected quiver of the lips. 

Maria melted instantaneously, this was so pain¬ 
fully, undeniably the fact, and pressed Fanny’s head 
against her ample bosom. 

“It’s different,” Fanny repeated and wished it 
wasn’t different. Suddenly the hunger for Tante 
Ilde became very insistent, rising up from far out 
of those happy days when she had been the pret¬ 
tiest girl that any one had ever seen, and had picked 


FANNY 


251 

daisies in Tante Ilde’s garden at Baden and pulled 
off the petals: “He loves me—loves me not—not.” 
. . . And this was what Life was. . . . Maria 
could do any blessed thing she pleased about Tante 
Ilde. She, Fanny, washed her hands of the matter. 

And even the next morning things weren’t any 
better, and she made her toilet snapping crossly at 
Maria, with the corners of her mouth drawn down, 
looking fully her age, which though it wasn’t great, 
she couldn’t afford to do . . . considering. . . . 
And then she had gone out to the Bristol to the 
tinkle of her bracelets, and the slightest rustle of 
silk, (just enough to let one know somebody was 
passing,) her eyes stormily sombre under the droop¬ 
ing plume of her hat, her furs enveloping her softly, 
odorously—all in a not unfamiliar, black sea of 
depression. That black sea, with no slightest 
light, that sometimes threatened to flood up above 
her red, full mouth, above her small, flat ears, above 
her wide, blue eyes, till she was drowned, till she was 
dead. . . . What was the matter that Tante Ilde 
couldn’t walk right in to her own niece’s home? 
And then, it must be confessed, as she walked slowly 
along, she used some expressions in regard to life 
and living that she hadn’t learned in her father’s 
house. 

Fanny had been likened by a foreign friend to 
one of her own waltzes,—beautiful and hot, gay and 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


252 

sad, for beneath the passion and beauty they embody 
is that ever-recurrent note of melancholy, woven 
through each sparkling melody, to be caught up 
swiftly into the inevitable coda that for so many of 
Fanny’s kind is the end indeed. 

Vienna laughs and weeps to her waltz music, 
loves and dies to its measures, to a continual 
“allegro con fuoco.” Weber thus annotated one of 
the glowing movements of “Blumen der Liebe 
“Breast against breast he confesses his love and 
receives from her the sweet avowal of love re¬ 
turned.” . . . Breast against breast indeed, giving 
and receiving, myriads of maidens in each generation 
embody the brief and tragic triumph of passion and 
beauty over the lengthier security of duty. In that 
very heart of Europe is a perpetual, warm, ferment¬ 
ing desire for love, an instant sensibility to the arts 
—to all beauty in its visible forms; but “swiftly 
with fire” these are forever comsuming themselves, 
for they have little to do with material success or 
personal continuity. 

The Turks left other things there than coffee and 
ruins. They dropped some seed of Eastern magic 
into this only half Western soil and a dark flower, 
like no other dark flower of the earth, sprang up 
abundantly. Its color for a time has been washed 
out in the sombre waters of War and Peace; it has 
been trampled by the slow tread of cripples, its 
growth suspended in starvation. But another gen- 


FANNY 


253 

eration that has not seen these things and died of 
pity or hunger will arise, other “Flowers of Love” 
will blossom. The sagging portico of that stately 
pleasure-palace, Vienna, will be again upheld by 
Caryatides with glowing eyes, with bright cheeks, 
with thick, shining coils of dark hair, with full, soft 
figures and tireless, round, white arms. And in 
through the portico, coming from their dark side 
streets, will pass “allegro con fuoco,” passionate, 
gifted young men, worshipers of the arts and 
devotees of the graces, with their Frauenlieb and 
their Frauenlob apostrophes, their lovely, tragic 
hymns to Spring and Hope and Love— till the 
sun and the moon and the stars shall have done 
with them. 


When Frau Stacher got up that Saturday morning 
she found that her legs were trembling weakly and 
that only with the greatest effort could she stand. 
Her chest seemed bound in iron, too, and she was 
breathing quite noisily. 

“I’ve got a terrible cold after all,” she thought 
appalled at the idea of being ill at Irma’s—in 
the alcove. “It just can’t be,” she thought 
desperately. Up and out was the word, though 
down and all in was what she felt. She was 
momentarily comforted by the cup of ersatz 
coffee that Irma always served very hot, but she had 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


254 

a vast repugnance to the piece of hard bread. Gusl, 
with his sharp eyes out had been watching it as 
it lay untouched at her plate. 

“Tante Ilde, you’re not eating your bread,” he 
observed finally. 

“No, I don’t want it. I’m not hungry,” and she 
pushed it towards him. 

“Not hungry!” he exclaimed and his voice was 
hopeful. 

At that Ferry who always noticed things said: 
“You’re not ill, Tante?” 

Irma glanced up quickly. But her sister-in-law 
always looked that way in the morning, pale and 
spent and a hundred years old, so she turned to the 
more agreeable consideration of the slice of bread. 
Being impartial was one of Irma’s many virtues and 
that slice was cut into three bits, the thin end larger 
than the two thicker pieces. It was a pleasant sight, 
though no more durable than a flash of lightning, 
to see the boys eat it, in an instant, one chew, one 
swallow. Then they began to get ready for school 
and Irma lingeringly wrapped Ferry’s knitted scarf 
about his neck, she was strangely tender with her 
sons, and they all clattered down the bare steps. 

Frau Stacher always rather dreaded that moment 
of being alone with Irma, but this morning she was 
glad of the sudden quiet in the apartment. She 
would have lain down again but for Irma’s inevitable 


FANNY 


255 

question if she did so. Clearly Irma’s wasn’t a 
house to relax in. You got up and went on. So in¬ 
stead of lying down, as usual she helped to wash the 
cups and saucers and put the room in order. 

Then when Irma sat down to her work by the 
window, she went back to her alcove and in its semi¬ 
obscurity, leaned heavily on the yet unmade divan, 
trying not to cough. She could hear Irma drawing 
the stitches of her embroidery in and out, and the 
little click when she picked up or lay down her 
scissors. She was no more alone than that. It 
suddenly seemed to her that the most intolerable 
of all her misfortunes was never, never to be alone. 
She started up uncomfortably as Irma called out, 
speaking more gently, however, than was her wont: 

“You’re going surely to Fanny’s today?” and then 
she heard Irma lay down her work and cross the 
room. As she pulled the curtain aside Frau Stacher 
stood up guiltily. Irma even in her preoccupation 
could not but see that her sister-in-law was ailing. 
There was no mistaking it. But Irma was deter¬ 
mined, more determined than she had ever been 
about anything that she should go to Fanny’s that 
day, that very day. Virtue or vice, ’twas all the 
same in Irma’s eyes, all run together. Ferry had 
to be saved, saved that day and not another. 

“Hermann says that if Ferry gets over this com¬ 
ing year, he’ll be all right.” 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


2 56 

Something familiarly, sombrely fierce lay in her 
eyes as impatiently she looked at the frail messenger 
of her desire. 

“Yes, I’m going, Irma, you can count on me, 
I won’t forget,” she answered almost humbly. 
“Don’t worry, we’ll arrange it,” and then her eyes 
fell on the little figure of the woman bending over 
waiting to have the two buckets, one filled with 
apples and the other with pears, put into her hands. 

“I’ll just take it with me—to show Fanny,” she 
continued. 

Irma’s eyes filled with tears as she took the little 
carving from the table and started to wrap it in a 
piece of newspaper. 

“No, give it to me just as it is. I’ll carry it in 
my bag,” and she put it into her worn reticule that 
never stayed clasped and now promptly fell open as 
she laid it on the divan. 

“You won’t lose it,” questioned Irma anxiously, 
seeing her put it into the precarious keeping of the 
bag, but her sister-in-law didn’t answer, only pulled 
the curtains together again. Irma went slowly 
back to her embroidery, but after a moment or two 
not hearing any sounds of moving about, she asked 
in a tone whose irritation was but half-suppressed: 

“Don’t you think you had better begin to get 
ready?” This having to push her sister-in-law up 
and along, out of the house, filled her with a sick¬ 
ening impatience. 


FANNY 


257 

“Yes, perhaps I had better,” Frau Stacher an¬ 
swered obediently, “though it isn’t far.” 

And then Irma hearing those soft, slow move¬ 
ments of dressing behind the curtain said no more. 
She was really only thinking of the moment of her 
sister-in-law’s return, with the money in her purse 
or perhaps enough to be prudently pinned into her 
dress. 

Frau Stacher was thinking of nothing. All the 
forces of her being were employed in that act of 
clothing her body. After she was dressed she 
noticed that she had on the wrong skirt, but she 
felt she couldn’t change—and then she had put the 
velvet around her neck. One thing she didn’t do 
that morning, she only remembered it when she got 
out into the street—she hadn’t pulled back the 
curtains. 

But Irma, as she saw her ready to depart, though 
she noticed that the curtains weren’t drawn, only 
said again: 

“You won’t lose the little figure?” and Frau 
Stacher with that formidable submission in her eyes, 
even Irma got it, answered again: 

“No, I’ll be very careful.” Then she turned 
and inexplicably to herself embraced Irma and said, 
“Farewell” just as if she didn’t expect to be back 
in a few hours. Irma heard her steps getting 
fainter and fainter, as she went down the re¬ 
sounding stairway, until they were lost forever. 


2 5 8 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


Frau Stacher felt very weak, and her feet seemed 
made of lead, as she turned into the Rotenthurm 
Street, then that pain between her shoulders. But 
she was thankful that she had been able to get out 
and Fanny, mercifully, lived near. A pale, uncer¬ 
tain sun that gave no warmth, lay momentarily 
over the city. 

There was an undeniable excitement about going 
to Fanny’s, something adventurous, like going into 
exotic lands, that stimulated her momentarily and 
in that sick confusion of her being she did not try 
to analyze her varied and commingled sentiments. 
Bashfulness, timidity, the gentlest curiosity, grat¬ 
itude, affection, she was conscious of,—together with 
that increasing pair^ between her shoulders. . . . 

She was admitted by Maria whose small black 
eyes were snapping pleasantly, whose wide mouth 
wore the most affectionate of smiles; Maria, part 
of their lives since twenty-five years, Maria, who 
had always opened to her ring when she went to see 
her brother. 

“Ach, dear, gracious lady, how good of you to 
come to us!” she cried warmly and bending kissed 
Frau Stacher’s hand with all the old time reverence 
and affection. 

She felt like a storm-tossed little craft that has 
at last made port. She hadn’t thought it would be 


FANNY 259 

that way. It was, Indeed, “just like any other place, 
only much nicer.” 

“Fanny is making her toilette, I’m just getting 
her into her things,” Maria continued easily. 

“I’ll be there in a minute, Tante Ilde, dear,” 
called another welcoming voice from the next room, 
then in quite a different tone: 

“You old hag, you’ve* forgotten to take that stitch 
in my sleeve.” 

“Coming, coming,” called back Maria cheerfully 
and winked at Frau Stacher, “She doesn’t mean a 
thing. Just her little way,” she whispered admir¬ 
ingly; then aloud: 

“If the dear lady will lay her things aside,” 
and as Maria spoke she proceeded to help her re¬ 
move the old coat, peeling off the narrow sleeves 
and pulling down the little woolgn shawl that Frau 
Stacher wore underneath; she then put her into a 
comfortable chair, a cushion at her back, and with 
solicitous inquiries about her health, (Frau Stacher’s 
looks didn’t please Maria) “now you just rest while 
I finish getting Fanny ready,” she ended with a pat 
of her fat hand on the thin shoulder. 

“What are you talking about?” called her mis¬ 
tress, “Perhaps I’m not going out.” 

Maria disappeared through the door and Frau 
Stacher heard her say something about “stupid 
caprices.” 

Before the fine, even warmth of the porcelain 


i6o 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


stove Frau Stacher forgot how chilly she had been 
in the street; and the deep armchair with its soft 
cushion, how it engulfed yet sustained her! She was 
quite happy and almost comfortable. She felt more 
at ease, more at home than at any time since leaving 
Baden. 

Over a card table was spread a white cloth and 
on it a service for one. She felt unreasonably dis¬ 
appointed;—if Fanny could have stayed. Once in, 
it certainly was like any other place and truly it was 
nicer. 

Her heart had beat a little thickly as she dragged 
herself up the stairs with those leaden feet. Certain 
mysterious things you didn’t do the first time with¬ 
out a feeling . . . but she saw herself often in 
future coming quietly up those very steps. She 
would always let Maria know first, though why she 
would let Maria know first, instead of just ringing 
at the door, she didn’t try to explain. 

Plenty lay again about her, the dear, familiar 
forms of Fanny and Maria were ready to minister 
to her. She breathed in, as deeply as the constric¬ 
tion in her chest permitted, the warm comfort of 
it all, plenty, affection, in a starving world of old, 
unwanted women in garrets—in alcoves. 

From above the door Franz Joseph continued 
to smile paternally down upon her, opposite him his 
beautiful and luckless Empress. The banished Zifa 


FANNY 


261 


and her children struck a further absolving note of 
innocence and misfortune. Frau Stacher returned 
gratefully the benevolent look her Emperor was 
bending upon her, remembering that he too, had 
“had it hard.” As she slipped deeper into that 
comfortable chair she was conscious of being so 
tired, so spent that she feared she could never again 
get up. Yet it was almost delicious, the sense of 
languor—in that deep chair—in that warm room. 

An immense gilt basket in which was planted a 
young fruit tree in full blossom stood near one of 
the windows. It was tied with bright, blue ribbons, 
but its flowers were very pale in the hard January 
light. What was it doing there in mid-winter? 
She breathed in the faint scent of the forced blossoms 
hovering about the warm air. Ah, how indeed 
could she move out of that chair, how close that 
door behind her on that atmosphere of welcoming 
abundance ? 

She was sitting near the little table on which 
stood Fanny’s collection of elephants. One in pink 
jade with ruby eyes seemed to be looking compas¬ 
sionately at her. Then she wondered, but without 
impatience, why Fanny didn’t come. 

Fanny was taking longer than necessary, but sud¬ 
denly she had found that she could not bear to meet 
her aunt’s eyes. Oh, those eyes! They would 
gaze at her as children’s eyes gaze and she dreaded 


262 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


the feeling she knew she would have when she met 
them, right out, in daylight, in her own house. 
Behind that closed door Fanny was in a blue funk, 
Fanny who would have faced armies without turning 
a hair, and she fussed nervously with the objects 
on her dressing table and kept looking quite un¬ 
necessarily at her shining, softly-rolled back hair 
with her hand-glass. . . . 

“Why doesn’t Fanny come?” her aunt began to 
ask herself again somewhat anxiously and in her 
humility feared it was something connected with 
herself. Just then the front door bell rang and 
she jumped in her chair, a flush mounting to her face. 
She couldn’t at all have said what it was she feared 
might be impending but whatever it was, that ring 
made a genteel old lady start up when she was too 
tired really to move and blush the bright blush of 
her long lost youth. Maria ran out of Fanny’s 
room, in what seemed to her an anxious way, to 
open the door. But she only took in a box, a 
large, flat, pleasant-looking box, the sort of box 
Frau Stacher remembered from her own shopping 
days. She saw the name Zwieback on it as Maria 
took it in to the other room. Another long wait 
ensued. She could hear whispers and the rustling 
of tissue paper. 

Then all of a sudden the bedroom door was 
flung open and Fanny appeared, holding high up, 
so that it hid her face, a long, black coat. In a 


FANNY 263 

flash, before a word could be said, Tante Ilde knew 
that coat was for her. . . . 

Fragrantly, warmly Fanny was bending over her, 
embracing her; a sudden, flaming color that had 
come out of no box was in her cheeks. 

“Stand up, Auntie,” she was saying in her silver 
voice, more embarrassed than she had ever been 
in any other of the seemingly more formidable 
moments of her life. 

Tante Ilde turned her wide, soft glance upon 
her. In a pale, silken wrapper Fanny was looking 
as fresh as lilies who have neither sowed nor spun. 
It was the same bright, dawnlike face that Tante 
Ilde knew so well, there in the cold, grey light of 
the January day, it recalled somehow early morn¬ 
ing clouds in summer. . . . 

She got up as her niece spoke and in another 
minute that warm, soft wool, that smooth, satiny 
lining were enfolding her. It must have cost a mon¬ 
strous sum. 

“Oh, Fanny,” she protested weakly, “to spend 
all that money on me!” 

“Money, what is money?” returned Fanny 
blithely, her aplomb completely restored. “You 
can’t keep it nowadays. It just rots if you try. No 
more old stocking!” And then she proceeded to 
throw that practiced eye of hers over the coat. . . . 
Any niece with a beloved aunt. 

“Come here,” she next cried to Maria and 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


264 

pointed out a button that needed changing, Tante 
Ilde was even thinner than they thought, “bring 
some pins.” 

Down on her silken knees she went and put the 
pin where the button was to be sewed on again. 

Tante Ilde quite forgot that the family instinct¬ 
ively lowered their voices when speaking of Fanny. 
She was her brother’s child again, her own little 
Fannerl, the sweet, soft, laughing, incredibly, 
brightly, beautiful maiden of those far away days. 
Ah, she should have married a prince! 

“You are an angel,” she said tremulously keeping 
back with difficulty some tears that lay heavily just 
behind her eyes. 

“ ‘Angel’ is going a bit far,” answered Fanny 
modestly, though really delighted in her heart, and 
she wondered for the thousandth time what on earth 
they would have done without her. 

“I’m not going out,” she said crisply to Maria, 
“the devil can take the Bristol. I’m going to stay 
with Tante Ilde. Bring another cover, and quick, 
I’m sure she’s hungry,—I’m nearly starved.” This 
last wasn’t quite true, for not so very long before 
Maria had taken in Fanny’s tray with coffee and 
cream and a glossy, buttery gipfel, got, Maria and 
the cuckoo alone knew from where. 

“You look so tired, Auntie dear,” said Fanny 
next. 


FANNY 


265 

Her aunt’s face was, indeed, quite pinched and 
very pale in spite of the fresh glow of her heart, 
near which, between her shoulders was that increas¬ 
ingly unpleasant, stabbing sort of pain. But she 
was a game old lady. She hadn’t yet complained 
about anything, so she only answered: 

“A bit of a cold coming on, that’s all.” 

“I don’t think you ought to go to the cemetery 
with us this afternoon,” Fanny pursued somewhat 
anxiously. 

“But going in a carriage, and if I wear my warm, 
new coat?” she questioned eagerly. 

The new coat made the effort seem possible. 
Not, oh, not at all through vanity, but a new coat, 
her own,—she enjoyed, too, in anticipation, show¬ 
ing it to Irma, though Irma would be sure to 
say something about it designed to dim its glory. 

Maria was bringing in the oatmeal soup that she 
had fully intended since the evening before to make 
for Frau Stacher ... she knew Fanny. It was 
steaming up pleasantly from its little blue and white 
tureen and Fanny proceeded to ladle it out gener¬ 
ously. She had pushed the card-table close to her 
Tante Ilde’s chair and drawn up a little stool for 
herself on the other side. Frau Stacher took a few 
mouthfuls,—delicious, there was certainly some milk 
in it. Tired as she was she couldn’t be mistaken 
about there being milk in it, but all the same 


266 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


she found she wasn’t hungry. She forced it down 
however, to the last drop; Fanny mustn’t think she 
didn’t like it. 

Fanny had jumped up restlessly after watching 
Her take the first spoonful and lighted a cigarette 
and then sat down again, bending forward, her 
elbows on her knees, and her white hand, with its 
immense sapphire ring, just one big, square stone, 
putting the cigarette up to her red mouth, her 
rosily manicured finger tips flickering the ash from 
it on to the floor. The pale silken sleeves would 
ripple back and show Fanny’s dimpled elbows. She 
took a little soup herself, but, like her aunt, showed 
no enthusiasm when Maria brought in a cutlet and 
some fried potatoes. 

Frau Stacher knew well Maria’s fine kitchen hand. 
So many years she had sat at her brother’s table 
and seen Maria put just such cutlets on with 
those unrivalled fried potatoes. Frau Stacher was 
pierced cruelly for a moment by the memories these 
familiar things evoked; the children sitting around 
the table, talking and laughing, and her brother 
Heinie, who had loved them all impartially, looking 
indulgently from one to another. Indeed it 
seemed the most natural of things to each of the 
three women; a thing they’d done a thousand times 
together. 

But after her first mouthful of the cutlet Frau 
Stacher knew she wasn’t going to be able to eat 


FANNY 


267 

it. Its odor was delicious, the edges of the tender 
veal were goldly brown, and towards the middle 
of the piece it could easily be seen how white the 
meat was. 

“I believe you’re ill, Tanterl,” said Fanny again 
looking sharply at her. “You rest here while I 
take Kaethe and Leo.” 

“But I want to go with you,” she returned implor¬ 
ingly, “I don’t want to leave you.” 

Tante Ilde couldn’t have told why she was so 
determined to go with Fanny, but the longing took 
her out of her usual gently acquiescent ways. . . . 
As if Fanny was to do something solemn, important 
for her, and she mustn’t be separated from her. 
As if she had been warned that by keeping close to 
Fanny she would avoid some last, some ultimate 
horror. It was suddenly as clear as that. 

“It’s only a little cold I’ve got,” she repeated 
beseechingly, like a child imploring some permission. 

“As you will,” said Fanny sweetly, “I’m only 
afraid you’ll take more cold at the cemetery.” 

But Frau Stacher felt again that sudden, almost 
fierce cleaving to Fanny, to Kaethe ... to little 
Carli. Where they went, there she wanted to go. 
It seemed to her, too, that she wasn’t feeling quite 
so ill, but rather afraid to be left alone, even with 
Maria, nice as that would be; Maria who would 
come in and talk about the old, the happy days, and 
show her Fanny’s things,—Fanny’s jewels and 


268 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


gowns. But even so she wanted to be with her own, 
her very own. She forced down a morsel of the cut¬ 
let and took a bit of the fried potatoes on her fork 
but it was evident to Fanny, and Maria, watching 
from the door, that she was eating with difficulty. 
She had an unbelievable, astonishing repugnance to 
the meat, to the fatty smell; then too, she was worry¬ 
ing about Ferry, thinking all the time that now she 
must speak of him. It seemed a mountainous ex¬ 
ertion, one she was quite unequal to. But she could 
never go back to Irma’s unless she did and then, 
too, she wanted to help Ferry. But it seemed be¬ 
yond her strength. Anything except sitting still and 
being ministered to was beyond it. Then suddenly 
as she sat there toying with her cutlet, she knew 
that her work was done; though whence the assur¬ 
ance had come she could not have told. It came, 
a sort of glimmering presence, bringing its dim, 
sweet promise that effort was ended. Her atten¬ 
tion was quite engaged by that lovely, unexpected 
presence, and it was as if from a long distance that 
she heard Fanny say: 

“I think a good, strong cup of coffee, right now, 
would be the best thing for you,” and then she 
called to Maria to make it quickly and make it 
strong. 

The very suggestion acted as a stimulant on Frau 
Stacher, and she was able to pull herself together 
sufficiently to look gratefully at her niece. Then 


FANNY 


269 

her eyes wandered again and were caught by that 
flowering tree, so spring-like to her age. It’s thin 
fragrance foretold a true spring that she too old, 
and it too young, would never see. It was palely, 
tenderly confused in her mind with that gleaming 
presence. She felt that she must recognize its 
beauty by some word—perhaps afterwards she 
would get around to Ferry. She experienced a 
slight timidity at mentioning that plant, however, 
though why it should awaken timidity, with that 
other sentiment of reverence for its beauty, she 
could not have told. 

“What lovely things grow on the earth!’’ she ven¬ 
tured finally, indicating it with the slightest of 
gestures. 

“Yes,” answered Fanny indifferently, she was 
thinking how changed her aunt was, “but you should 
see the donkey that sent it.” 

Frau Stacher thought no more of the plant. 

Fanny herself was only toying with the veal cut¬ 
let and potatoes. If the truth be told she was 
aware of a slight excitement, following on her first 
embarrassment, just enough to cut her appetite . . . 
having Tante Ilde there . . . that way. 

A pause ensued. They could hear Maria in the 
kitchen. On an important occasion like that Maria 
didn’t intend to be alone, behind a closed door, and 
miss what they were saying. Maria herself was 
quite worked up. She hoped it would be decided 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


270 

for Frau Stacher not to go to the cemetery and then 
she would relieve her bosom of a lot of things pleas¬ 
ant and unpleasant, that really Fanny’s aunt, when 
you had a fine aunt like that, should know, and be¬ 
sides she longed to show her Fanny’s things. Then 
she carried in the coffee, an immense cup, its aroma 
filled the room, drowning the thin, sweet scent of 
the forced flowers. 

“Just what I needed, Fanny,” Tante Ilde said in 
what seemed to be a loud tone, with that hammer¬ 
ing in her ears; it was really not much more than 
a whisper. From the very first swallow she felt 
herself being renewed, and as she continued to sip 
it, a delightful feeling of actual strength regained 
came to her. Not go with her dear ones to lay 
Carli away? The thought was foolish . . . and 
being driven there and back and wearing her new 
coat? She was beginning to feel equal to any¬ 
thing. 

“It’s so good,” she murmured between her gen¬ 
teel little sips and when Fanny dropped an extra 
lump of sugar in without asking her, it was still 
more sustaining to both body and soul and she drank 
in longer swallows the sweet, dark strength. 

Then Maria replaced the cutlet by two pieces of 
Sacher tart, one for her and one for Fanny. And 
that, too, was dark and sweet and she was able to 
eat it. A bite, a sip of coffee and then another bite, 
another sip. She got on really well with it, though 


FANNY 


271 

for all its pleasing taste each bite had a way of 
stopping for a while in her chest. 

Then suddenly she knew it was time to speak 
about Ferry, quite time, before she took the last 
swallows. 

She reached down by her chair where lay her 
poor bag and picking it up she took out the little 
wooden statue of the woman bent over waiting for 
Ferry to put the full pails in her hands. 

‘‘Ferry has a lot of talent,” she began musingly 
rather than informingly, as she passed it across the 
table to Fanny, “and such an old knife too, that he 
did it with. I’d like to give him a new one.” 

“But naturally, we’ll get him the best, with six or 
eight blades !” cried Fanny very pleased. Anything 
they needed except that eternal food and raiment 
and fuel was a welcome suggestion. Fanny did love 
to give people things they could live without, not 
just bread and coal and shoes. It got monotonous 
to one of her temperament. Even such a little 
thing as a knife for a boy struck an agreeably releas¬ 
ing note. She kept looking at the delicate figure. 
It imparted a pleasant sensation to her fingers as 
she touched it. It was quite evident that Ferry had 
talent. All was coming around as Tante Ilde had 
hoped. 

“But Ferry is ill,” she continued with her gentlest 
look. “He has night-sweats sometimes, and always 
a little cough.” 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


272 

“Ach, the poor Buberl!” cried Fanny warmly. 

“How easy Fanny makes things,” her aunt was 
thinking, yet somehow she still hesitated. 

Fanny was passing her hand again over the little 
figure which kept inviting the caress of her long, 
white fingers, of her soft, rosy palm. 

“Hermann says he must go to the country,—a 
bit high,—if he is to be saved and at his age one 
can’t delay.” 

So it was done—as easy as that after all. That 
little wooden peasant woman cried out not alone of 
young talent but of fresh air, the fruits of the field, 
you couldn’t get away from it, not that Fanny was 
trying to; further more the familiar story of family 
needs, now one thing now another, chased away the 
last trace of embarrassment. She was on the firm¬ 
est of grounds there, only she was thinking again 
how old and ill her aunt was looking and did not 
answer immediately. When she did it was to ex¬ 
claim warmly again: 

“But naturally! Of course we must send him to 
the country. Manny will tell us where.” Then 
Fanny, who was, indeed, as Pauli said, “a good 
fellow” and no fool either added, “Don’t you want 
to take the money to Irma yourself?” 

So that was all it was—that stone-heavy act! 
Light as thistledown really—because Fanny was 
Fanny. 

Then suddenly as she sat there looking at her, for 


FANNY 


273 

she knew not how long, with still unspent treasures 
of love in her look, she saw that Fanny’s eyes were 
wet, not because of Ferry either, he could be helped, 
but because of other things, things that she, her poor 
aunt, didn’t know about. She saw that for all 
Fanny’s gayety there were rings around her lovely 
eyes and that she was pale under that merest touch 
of rouge. The merest touch was all she ever used. 
She was too wise as well as too lovely to be the 
painted woman. Fanny hung out no signs. 

Then Frau Stacher found herself saying to her 
niece who lived just off the Kaerntner Street: 

*‘Fanny, precious one, you too, have some grief.” 

Frau Stacher was seeing all things from a great 
but clear distance. Things stood out very sharply 
now that that feverish blur seemed suddenly to 
have been wiped from her eyes. It was as if she, 
Ildefonse Stacher, stood on a mountain and saw 
the world, a valleyed plain, spread out before her. 
Mortals dwelt in it, doing their little best or their 
little worst. Sharp as their figures were it was still 
too far to see what exactly was their best and 
what their worst. Legions of them. Hosts of 
them. She saw Fanny fighting under deep-dyed 
colors, in an innumerable army of women, drawn 
up in array against the sons of other women. The 
look she bent upon her niece as she turned from the 
contemplation of the armies in the plain became 
more tender, more grave. 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


274 

Fanny’s eyes flooded with tears under that look; 
hanging crystal a moment about her dark lashes, 
they fell slowly leaving smooth, shining, white little 
roads down her cheeks with just that touch of rouge. 
Such a little thing as that Frau Stacher could focus 
her eyes on,—even after the immensity of the plain. 

Fanny went over and knelt by her aunt who had 
always loved her—who loved her now—and put 
her shining head against that thin breast and wept. 
Fanny hadn’t wept, except in rage, for a long time, 
and there were many tears to fall. 

“I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it,” she whispered, 
but she didn’t say what she couldn’t bear and Tante 
Ilde didn’t ask her, only pressed that gleaming 
head more closely to her. And Fanny should have 
noticed how strangely her aunt was breathing when 
she had her head there against her breast. But 
suddenly she got up and said something about her 
nerves being “total kaput” and went into her bed¬ 
room and closed the door. 

Maria crept in from the kitchen. 

“It’s the Count,” she whispered, “I’m afraid 
we’re going to lose him. Fanny adores the ground 
he walks on. A fine gentleman, a Cavalier,” (Ma¬ 
ria pronounced it “cawlier” in her soft, thick Vien¬ 
nese) “but not a kreutzer to bless himself with and 
a South American girl whose Papa has more head 
of cattle than in all Europe, is crazy about him and 
wants to marry him. Whatever we’ll do, I don’t 


FANNY 


275 

know. She’s that jumpy when the bell rings, she’s 
afraid it’s bad news corning in at the door. His 
family is ruined by the Peace and his father com¬ 
manding and his mother praying him to save them, 
and four unmarried sisters too. A bad mess we’re 
in and what will be the end? I went to the for¬ 
tune teller a week ago,—a wonder,—and she saw 
cattle, cattle everywhere and told me I was to be¬ 
ware of them, but how can I beware of stupid cattle 
stamping about in South America?” asked Maria 
helplessly, resentfully. “I knew all the time what 
she meant—and saying, too, that she saw a letter 
coming. Oh, I’ve been that worried! Naturally 
I haven’t told Fanny, but I’ve been waiting for that 
letter ever since. You don’t know Fanny,” Ma¬ 
ria’s eyes filled with tears, “one day she says she 
will kill herself and another that she’s going into a 
convent,” she whispered dismally, after a cautious 
look at the closed door; “and if Fanny ever gets 
started that way, she’ll make Maria Magdalena 
look about like this,” and she proceeded to measure 
a negligible quantity of the surrounding atmos¬ 
phere between her thumb and forefinger. There 
was, however, pride in her voice. 

Frau Stacher was listening vaguely. For all her 
deep interest in Fanny, she was finding it difficult 
to focus her thoughts. Things were getting blurred 
again. 

Maria kept on, a warning note in her voice, “I’ll 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


276 

feel sorry for the family if Fanny doesn’t hold out,” 
(Maria, it will be seen, was at the other side of 
“holding out”—the far side.) “She bought the 
villa at Moedling last year and we put a lot of 
money in England through a Jew,” here Maria was 
quite contemptuous . . . “but,” she added in an¬ 
other and fondly indulgent tone, “we had to let the 
Count, his people were starving, have a lot of that. 
We still get some income from it, but there are so 
many of us, and if Fanny should lose her nerve,”— 
Maria broke off; only she didn’t use the ordinary 
word for “nerve” but the famous Vienna expres¬ 
sion “Hamur,” which means, beside nerve, a lot of 
things that are both more and less. 

Tears overflowed her small, dark, friendly eyes. 
There was no nonsense about Maria. She adored 
Fanny, she was proud of Fanny and to have the 
revered aunt sitting there made a priceless occasion 
on which to relieve her feelings. Crossing her arms 
over her ample bosom she went on: 

“She gives everything away, not only to the fam¬ 
ily and naturally to the Count, but yesterday—will 
you believe it,—to a shameless hussy, no better than 
she should be, she gave a heap of money to keep her 
out of the hospital, where she truly belongs. I told 
Fanny where I thought she’d end herself if she 
didn’t look out, but Fanny”. . . she broke off sud¬ 
denly as the bedroom door opened. 

“What are you gossiping about?” Fanny cried 


FANNY 


277 

sharply to her, “Didn’t you hear the door bell 
ring?” Then as it rang again a contraction passed 
over her face and she started to the door herself. 

But Maria, in spite of her avoirdupois, was out 
like lightning. After a moment’s parleying in the 
hall she was back. 

“Nothing,” she said looking fondly, relievedly at 
Fanny, “It’s only to say the carriage is there.” 

Fanny went slowly back into her room followed 
by Maria who shut the door. Frau Stacher left 
alone, almost immediately fell into a doze; her eyes 
closed heavily and she slipped deeply into the big 
chair. But she couldn’t quite lose herself for she 
had a feeling that it would soon be time to go and 
kept trying to keep herself awake. 

She sat up sharply, with a start, when Fanny re¬ 
appeared, how long after she could not have told, 
in a black costume whose long, fur-trimmed cape 
fell smartly about her form. A tiny black velvet 
hat from which she had just torn the cunningly, 
expensively placed blue aigrette, put her eyes in a 
becoming, melancholy shadow. She had an extra 
pair of black gloves in her hand and a fine dark 
leather bag that she had done with, to replace the 
“horror” as she called it to herself that her aunt 
was using. 

“You’ve got such dear little hands,” she was say¬ 
ing as she held out the gloves, “These ar’n’t big 
enough for me. I paid a heathen price for them, 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


278 

and this bag’s a bit handier than yours.” But in 
spite of her pleasant words, her pallor was so ex¬ 
treme as she held out the gloves and bag, that her 
aunt whose eyes were again very bright and not 
alone with fever, noted it anxiously. 

“Oh, my little, little Fanny,” she cried in quite a 
strong voice, and even held out her arms. She 
shared, in a way she could not have expressed, 
Fanny’s grief whatever it was. She didn’t want 
Fanny, dear, gold Fanny to suffer. Fanny mustn't 
suffer. Fanny mustn't weep. She wanted to live a 
long, long time, even uncomfortably, denudedly, so 
that out of the whole careless world, Fanny might 
always have someone who truly loved her. 

Then she became aware, for the first time, of 
something that intimately concerned herself. The 
shape and color of her own life. . . . Loving the 
children of three other women had been her life. 
Her middle class life, undisturbing and for so long 
undisturbed. One day, one year, like another, al¬ 
ways loving the children of three other women . . . 
looking through the same windows at the same 
things. And suddenly now Fanny’s world, Fanny’s 
strange world ... It had other horizons, red 
horizons behind dark mountains with their secrets. 
But of these secrets her aunt was not thinking. She 
only knew, as she stood close to Fanny, that it was 
her own flesh and blood that was suffering,—beau¬ 
tiful and suffering. 


FANNY 


279 

How Fanny’s beauty threw a bright, blinding 
cloud about everything that concerned her! She 
said again: 

“My darling child, my beautiful child, don’t 
weep,” as Fanny pressed against her, and she com¬ 
forted her as she might have done in the far off 
years for girlish griefs. Had she reflected she 
might have changed her old motto into “Beauty 
stays, Virtue goes.” 

She was breaking in Fanny’s house for a last 
time her alabaster box of precious spikenard. 
From it, in the blue room, a strong fragrance came, 
overpowering the scent of lily of the valley from an 
expensive shop in the Graben that hung about 
Fanny’s clothes, and the thin perfume of the too- 
early blossomed plant. She was thinking only of 
Fanny’s generosity and why she could indulge those 
many generous impulses she thought not at all,— 
just as if the family didn’t lower their voices when 
speaking of Fanny and look around to see that the 
children weren’t there. She felt, too, intimately 
joined to Fanny. Deeply beneath consciousness 
was that feeling that Fanny was yet to give her 
something essential, had some ultimate gift for her, 
that she must be there to receive. . . . That it was 
to be her deathbed she didn’t know. She only felt 
that something final and priceless would come 
through Fanny. 

And truly ’tis a great thing to give any one. For 


28 o 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


mostly each one, no matter how he wanders or is 
denuded, has, in some strange way, his own. 

They were driving slowly up over the noisy cob¬ 
ble stones of the Jacquingasse on their way to 
the cemetery, Kaethe and Fanny and Tante Ilde 
on the back seat of the big, black mourning coach. 
Kaethe, wedged between them, was holding on her 
lap the white wreath. Opposite sat the Professor. 
On his knees for a last time was Carli; Carli in 
his little white box; Carli on his first and only 
journey. 

The sable horses struck the cobble stones with 
their slow, accustomed beat. It seemed to Frau 
Stacher the loudest sound she had ever heard, and 
“some day for you, some day for you” seemed 
cadenced unmistakably. . . . 

In the dark Minorite church Fanny had been a 
model of piety and recollection. She crossed her¬ 
self so slowly, so devoutly. She buried her face in 
her hands and knelt long without fidgetting on the 
hard, uncomfortable stool. She took holy water and 
held a tip of her finger to Kaethe as they went out 
and then to Tante Ilde and to Leo. She and Kaethe 
had always loved each other very much. Fanny 
after her wont was going through the afternoon 
without stint or sloppiness. It would be, in her 
hands, an “entire” matter. 

As they drove along Kaethe rested her head on 


FANNY 


281 


her sister s warm, scented shoulder. Her eyes were 
dry, but her face was haggard from the night. 

No one noticed that Tante Ilde didn’t say a word. 
Kaethe and Leo were with their child a last time and 
Fanny, who generally selected pleasant things to 
do, was finding it more wearing than she had 
thought and was plunged in her own reflections. At 
one moment she said to herself “I’m not going to be 
able to stick it out,” and forgot their griefs and 
miserably let her thoughts turn to the man she truly 
loved, and if everything in the world, every last 
thing, had been different. . . . Then suddenly she 
fell to cursing in her heart a certain predatory 
gentleman whom she had known in the “beginning,” 
no, before the “beginning,” but she pulled herself 
up round, that carriage was no place for curses, 
neither was it the moment. Then she caught sight 
of her face above Eberhardt’s right shoulder. It 
was distinctly mirrored in the reflecting surface of 
the glass at his back, formed by the heavy black flaps 
of the driver’s coat. It was white, white as the 
coffin on Eberhardt’s lap, and the eyes were deep, 
dark pits, almost as if the flesh had fallen away from 
them. She was horribly frightened. What was 
the warm thing that went out of you and after it 
went out you were put in a box? . . . She jerked 
her head so that it slipped from view. But she got 
Tante Ilde’s instead. ... It was just dread¬ 
ful. . . . All right as long as you lived, but there 


282 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


came a time when beauty, which had been so help¬ 
ful, was clearly of no avail. . . . The activities of 
family and town were concentrated on getting you 
into a box and then . . . Fanny who believed in 
hell and damnation, drew in her breath shudder- 
ingly. She was thankful to feel Kaethe’s warm, 
living head against her shoulder. She wasn’t dead 
yet—she was suddenly sure, too, that she’d have 
“time to repent.” She quite brightened up, and as 
she never did anything by halves was apparently 
entirely herself by the time they got to the cemetery. 

Fanny in the bosom of her family, for once taking 
charge of things in person, not just paying from a 
distance, was really worth seeing. Fanny at last 
visibly the source of whatever mercies they received. 
Fanny, as Pauli so truly called her, the family Dox- 
ology . . . according to the mysterious permissions 
of God the source of their only blessings. 

Fanny weeping and praying by the little grave, 
supporting the stricken mother—her sister, and 
laying on it the big wreath. Fanny taking them to 
the cafe near the cemetery and giving them hot 
coffee after their cold grief. . . . 

It was Fanny, too, who, when some extraor¬ 
dinarily stubbly semmels were served with it, bearing 
not the slightest resemblance to the anciently far- 
famed Viennese rolls, scolded the shambling, flat- 
footed waiter and said loudly it was a “shame” and 
“disgusting,” and ended by going over to the desk 


FANNY 


283 

and saying something in a lower tone to the gaunt 
woman who sat there. The woman had promptly 
produced some coffee cake and some crescents kept 
only for rich grief. She was used to pale, tear- 
washed faces. Every day, every day, they came in 
and went out. She had seen many a strange altera¬ 
tion in their looks after that hot coffee, even after 
ersatz coffee. People kept on living for all they had 
that momentary feeling that they couldn’t. She had 
sat at that desk for twenty years. Grief, she knew 
it, all kinds, . . . and they kept on living. 

Even Kaethe, though her throat was stiff and dry 
with mother-grief, even Kaethe had taken her coffee. 

But Tante Ilde made no pretense at drinking hers, 
not even a sip. Those little shivers had changed 
into a continuous trembling. She felt both hot and 
cold. Her eyes were filmy. The only thing she 
wanted to do really was to lie down, never to move 
again, to give way to that over-powering lassitude 
that she could no longer struggle against. She was 
only vaguely worried because she’d lost the new 
bag; dropped it at the grave probably, though when 
Eberhardt went back to get it, immediately when 
she noticed its loss, on coming out of the ceme¬ 
tery, it had already vanished from the earth. Af¬ 
ter her first dismay, she had strangely not cared, 
and now she was murmuring something about the 
alcove, not at all what any of the others were think¬ 
ing or talking of. 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


284 

Suddenly Kaethe, startled out of her own grief at 
a trembling motion of her aunt’s shoulders, had 
looked at her in alarm. 

“But what is the matter, Tante Ilde?” she asked. 

“Why, she’s really ill!” cried Fanny sharply, 
“we’ve got to get her home.” 

Her aunt hearing the word home muttered once 
more something about the alcove. Her face was 
ashen, but her pale, wide eyes shone strangely 
through the film that again threatened to veil 
them. 

“We must go right away,” Fanny cried and hast¬ 
ily paid for the coffee. 

Her aunt didn’t even hear her. All her strength 
was engaged in getting totteringly to the door, the 
professor’s arm about her. 

“I’m going to take her with me,” Fanny whis¬ 
pered to Kaethe as they followed out to get into the 
coach. 

Kaethe looked at her deeply, there was much love 
in her glance, but she only said: 

“I don’t think she likes it at Irma’s. Irma’s so 
fierce and she’s so gentle.” 

“Sour stick,” said Fanny as usual when referring 
to her step-mother. “I’ll just keep her with me, 
for a day or two, till she’s better,” she continued 
thinking boldly, swiftly, “Maria can look after her.” 

It seemed suddenly the most natural thing in the 
world to have Tante Ilde with her for a day or two. 


FANNY 


285 

“Fanny, how good you are to us all,” Kaethe 
whispered to her sister. 

Good—nothing!” said Fanny. But virtue was, 
all the same, its own quite sufficient reward at that 
moment, though she felt horribly self-reproachful 
at the thought that sometimes she’d let them go for 
months . . . suppose they had all died! 

Tante Ilde kept slipping down between her nieces 
in the carriage, though they were supporting her as 
well as they could. Her head was hanging over 
her breast. She wanted to sleep, even bumping 
along over those cobble stones. They all watched 
her anxiously. Once Fanny, her nerves quite on 
edge, leaned out of the window and screamed to the 
driver in a horrible voice that the others didn’t 
recognize: “You, sheepshead! Get along!” 

Then somewhat restored she drew her head in 
and after a few minutes, opening her immense gold 
bag gave Kaethe some money. No, Fanny wasn’t 
doing things by halves that day. 

“Get something nice for supper,—for the chil¬ 
dren,” she added with sudden tears that were for 
the living children—no more for Carli who was 
really forever safe, though they seemed to have 
left him alone, in that chill Vienna earth, under that 
darkening January sky. . . . 

Frau Stacher scarcely knew how they got her up¬ 
stairs. Only as from a great distance she heard 
Maria’s “Jesus, Marie, Josef!” as they went in. 


286 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


She was beyond any more definite impression than 
that she had ceased to struggle. Fortitude, cruel 
virtue, were no longer demanded of her. 

When she was gently laid on Fanny’s bed she was 
conscious at first of its soft comfort under her aching 
body. They were taking off her clothes. She 
wished, but not anxiously, nor even ashamedly, that 
her chemise had not been so old or so grey from 
being always washed out in her little basin, but it 
didn’t really matter she knew, and she quite forgot 
about it when something fresh and silken and scented 
took its place, lying smoothly against her back with 
its hot point of pain. 

“Alcove,” she continued to mutter from time to 
time between stertorous breathings. 

“Why’s she talking so much about an alcove?” 
whispered Fanny to Maria as they sat by the bed 
waiting for Hermann, whom Eberhardt was to get 
and send back in the mourning coach. 

“It’s where she sleeps at Frau Irma’s,—a sort of 
alcove, off the living room. She’s got her old brown 
divan in it, you remember in Baden, but she needs a 
room of her own. When you get old you need to 
have a door to close, and then Frau Irma is not 
always easy.” 

“Easy? A porcupine,” Fanny whispered back 
and added something about Croatians in general 
not complimentary to that former Crownland. 
Then she looked restlessly at her watch. 


FANNY 


287 

“Why doesn’t he come? Maria, I’m afraid,” 
she ended with a break in her voice. 

“It is going badly with her,” nervously admitted 
Maria, who had once been a great one at sick beds 
and who, when it was not so personal, loved to be in 
at a death. 

Frau Stacher’s breathing was indeed very noisy. 
It whistled through her thin chest, it came in gasps 
from her blue mouth. 

“Do you think she’s going to die?” cried Fanny 
suddenly in panic. “We’d better get a priest any¬ 
way, only the poor heathen die without onel” 

Fanny had always been interested in foreign mis¬ 
sions and was in the habit of giving propitiatory 
sums to the church when she got panicky, for the 
purpose of conversions. . . . 

A ring at the door, a firm, long ring caused Maria 
to jump up. 

It was Hermann, Hermann of the old days, 
despite his right arm hanging straight, Hermann 
completely professional, quiet, strong, but loving 
too. 

He gave one look at his Tante Ilde. 

“Pneumonia,” he said, “she’s been ill for a couple 
of days,” and he started to do the little there was 
to be done. 

“But she never said anything except that she had 
a bit of a cold, the angel, and going to the cemetery 
too!” answered Fanny aghast. 


288 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


“To the cemetery in such a state!” he echoed in 
astonishment, “why she won’t get through the night. 
Fanny—I’m glad she’s here.” 

As the brother and sister looked at each other 
their eyes filled with tears. The way life was. . . . 

“I’m afraid she’s already begun her agony,” he 
whispered a few minutes later, “dear, good, sweet 
Tante Ilde.” 

But he wrote a prescription for Maria to take 
out. 

“It may last longer than we think. It’s some¬ 
times so hard for them to go, even when they’ve 
nothing to stay for, but we can try to make it easy 
for her.” 

Fanny ran out of the room after Maria. 

“Go to the Kapuziners and bring some one back 
and quick,” she whispered imperatively. 

Then she returned to the bedside. Hermann was 
bending over his aunt, raising her up and Fanny 
ran again and got some of the softest cushions from 
the blue divan, to put high, high under her head. 

Suddenly Tante Ilde opened her eyes. 

“Manny, dear, good Manny!” she cried, quite 
loud, then, “Fanny, darling, you won’t forget little 
Ferry?” 

And then she called for Corinne, and called again 
and again. She loved them all equally, but the 
flavor of Corinne’s being was the flavor of her own, 



FANNY 


289 

Ildefonse Stacher’s being, and that made a strange, 
an essential difference at the end. . . . 

But at that very minute Corinne was sitting in a 
little restaurant with Pauli, close together on a nar¬ 
row, leather bench in a corner, and Pauli’s dark, 
small hand lay closely, hotly over hers. After they 
had eaten he was going to take her to Kaethe’s,— 
not to Fanny’s where a more merciful Fate would 
have lead them. And that is why stupidly, horribly, 
Corinne was always to think, she wasn’t at home 
when Maria came to get her. . . . 

As Tante Ilde lay calling for Corinne, with her 
blue eyes widely open, neither Fanny nor Hermann 
could know that flashingly, she was seeing, as the 
day before, Pauli’s dark, turquoise-ringed hand 
clasped tightly over the slim whiteness of Corinne’s, 
and that she was very frightened for Corinne. She 
closed her eyes flutteringly several times, but still 
she saw their hands. Then suddenly the cavities 
under her brow grew very deep and she gave a long, 
whistling gasp. 

“Not yet,” whispered Hermann, seizing Fanny’s 
hand, for at the sight she had burst into wild weep¬ 
ing, “but soon,—dear, dear Auntie,” and from his 
voice there was momentarily released all the pent-up 
tenderness of his great heart. It flooded the room. 
It surged warmly about his sister, about his dying 
aunt. . . . 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


290 

Then Frau Ildefonse Stacher, born von Berg, 
began to pluck at the sheet and talk in snatches of 
Baden and of Heinie, her brother, their father. 
Once she smiled, but they didn’t know that it was 
because the bed was so soft and she was so com¬ 
fortable, quite knowing that she would never have 
to move again. . . . And certainly if this was dy¬ 
ing it wasn’t at all what people thought. 


Maria’s key was in the door . . . Maria’s voice 
was respectfully ushering someone into that silk- 
hung chamber,—a dark-bearded, deep-eyed Capu¬ 
chin monk. He threw back widely his brown- 
hooded cloak, and as he did so glanced enfoldingly 
at the dying woman without a single other look 
about the room. His work lay there. . . . 

Frau Stacher had fallen into a last unconscious¬ 
ness, but her breathing was still terribly loud, 
like wind through a vacant room. Fanny on her 
knees by the bed, was weeping and praying and 
kissing her aunt’s thin hand rather extravagantly, 
after her way. 

The monk’s eyes, accustomed to the sight of 
death, knew without a word from Hermann that 
the end was very near. On the little, white, lace- 
covered table by the bed, on which Maria had placed 
a lighted candle, a basin of water and a towel, he 
laid the Blessed Oils, those final oils with which he 


FANNY 


291 

was to anoint Frau Stacher’s noisy tenement, com¬ 
mending it to mercy. . . . 

Her broad-lidded blue eyes, that through tears 
would look no more on misery, no more on starving 
children, no, never anymore. . . . 

Her ears, that would hear no further cries of woe, 
nor any unprofitable discourse. . . . 

Her nostrils, that would no more weakly dilate 
at smell of needed food. . . . 

Her tongue, that would frame no more its words 
of gentle, helpless pity. . . . 

Her hands, that had once given so freely, would 
be held out no more to receive. Never again would 
she have to suffer humble uncertainty for the gifts 
of food and raiment. The body, no longer needing 
food, was itself become as raiment, cast off. . . . 

Her feet, that had forever fallen away from the 
ranks of those who in aged misery still flitted 
through the wintry streets of Vienna seeking their 
midday meal of charity . . . the Mariahilfer- 
strasse, endless, the Alserstrasse separated from the 
Hoher Markt by so many wide, open places, the 
narrow, crowded Kaerntnerstrasse and all those 
other streets that had sounded a last time to her 
diminished step. . . . 

Irma would never again give her the thin part of 
the soup, and never again would she watch to see 
that her sister-in-law drew back the curtains of the 
alcove. Alcove! Ildefonse Stacher, born von 


292 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


Berg, in the name of Principalities and Powers, in 
the name of the Cherubim and Seraphim, was about 
to take possession of her whole heavenly mansion, 
her very own from all time unto all time, and big and 
beautiful. 

Fanny not only buried her aunt decently, but 
splendidly as such things in such times were rated. 
A Requiem Mass was sung at the Capuchin Church. 
Expensive wreathes were ordered in the name of 
each niece for which Fanny herself paid; (except 
for Mizzi’s, Mizzi got the bill, unjustly, she con¬ 
sidered, and she ran into the office and said some 
horrible things to Hermann when it came). . . . 

They were but more tokens of Fanny, those many 
flowers, Fanny inescapably, confusingly beneficent 
to the end. Wet with the dew of the Church’s 
blessing, they almost concealed Tante Ilde’s coffin, 
as to the sound of those sable horses over the cobbly 
streets she was carried to her grave ... at last to 
be alone behind the heaviest door known to 
mortals. . . . 

As they drove back, each was saying in one or 
another tone, “what a pity,” that Tante Ilde 
couldn’t have been there to enjoy it in her fine, 
gentle way, and that if they had known she was go¬ 
ing to die so soon they would have arranged dif¬ 
ferently. They had spoken of Baden, too, and of 
childhood things. They had mourned, yes, but 


FANNY 


293 

their mourning, as would have been any cheer, was 
after their several and varying natures. 

Anna had not gone to Fanny’s to see her aunt 
laid out. No, indeed! She and Hermine went 
only to the church and cemetery, as likewise did four 
of Kaethe’s children and Irma and her boys. Her¬ 
mine had been all eyes for her veiled, but still dis- 
cernibly lovely aunt, whose crisp, deep black stood 
out cypress-like against the greyer, cheaper hues of 
the other mourning figures, and she had been pleas¬ 
antly conscious of a sort of pricking interest in some 
one in her very own family who, by all accounts, 
would go straight to Hell when she died. 

Ferry had wept over-much for his strength and 
years, but Resl in her high, true voice had sung “In 
Paradise, In Paradise” about the house for days. 

Liesel, after a long discussion with Otto, who was 
born knowing what happened to husbands who 
didn’t look after their wives, had gone, safely and 
properly accompanied by him, to take a last look at 
her aunt as she lay in Fanny’s darkened salon, can¬ 
dles at her head and feet, and all those flowers,—in 
January. So great was the majesty clothing the 
features of “poor, old Tante Ilde,” that fear sud¬ 
denly entered into Liesel’s rippling, shallow soul, 
and she got confused, and afterwards, to her annoy¬ 
ance, she could only remember vaguely that every¬ 
thing was blue and that over the divan was a silken 
cover picked out in what seemed to be silver rose- 


VIENNESE MEDLEY 


m 

buds. Donkey that she was, she hadn’t noticed 
the jeweled elephants either, nor the rabbits of 
which she had heard so much. Otto couldn’t help 
her out in the slightest,—no more than a blind man. 
No, Liesel decidedly hadn’t had her pleasant wits 
about her that day and she keenly regretted not 
having taken better advantage of her one 
opportunity. 

Fanny had not shown herself. Maria robed fit¬ 
tingly in deepest black, the expression on her face 
almost as sombre as her garb, saw through, com¬ 
petently and proudly, the visits of the sorrowing 
nieces. 

Mizzi had been all honey, though she thought 
Fanny was decidedly over-doing things, and had 
given Maria a present of money, which Maria con¬ 
sidered long due and took with small thanks. She 
couldn’t abide Mizzi anyway. 

Leo and Kaethe slipped in grievingly to continue 
their weeping by thaJ: second bier; Kaethe was 
greatly comforted by thinking that Carli and Tante 
Ilde were, even then, together. 

Hermann came no more. Beloved dead,—he 
couldn’t bear it—the cold body—and all he knew 
about it. No, no. 

Corinne whose sorrow was as deep as her being, 
spent two nights watching by her Dresden china 
aunt, now done in palest ivory. She felt as if she 
herself had destroyed her. When you had a fragile 


FANNY 


*95 

treasure like that and threw it literally into the 
streets. . . . 

But Fanny mingled her bright tears so healingly 
with her sister’s that the last night, as they sat near 
their Tante Ilde, they found themselves talking 
softly, smilingly even, of familiar little things that 
once had made her smile. The flickering light of 
the candles at her head and feet met the silver cruci¬ 
fix on her breast, shimmered on the silver hair flat 
above the still, pale forehead. . . . The same 
light caught with a greedy, leaping flame the young, 
living gold of the two bowed heads. . . . 

But after a while except for the memory of the 
splendid funeral Fanny gave her, getting dimmer 
even that, in the hearts of those she had truly loved, 
it would soon be to everyone except Tante Ilde her¬ 
self, busied timelessly in one of many mansions, as 
if she had never been. 





















































